JAKARTA, Saco- Indonesia.com — Pemerintah Provinsi DKI Jakarta menjajaki untuk menggelar pesta rakyat bersamaan dengan HUT ke-486 DKI Jakarta di pelataran Monumen Nasional (Monas). Wakil Gubernur DKI Basuki Tjahaja Purnama menampik bahwa pergelaran itu sebagai acara tandingan dari Pekan Raya Jakarta (PRJ).

"Enggak sampai ngomong cabut saham. Tidak ada mau mengubah JIExpo. Pameran silakan saja, tapi boleh dong ada juga yang berbasis budaya," ujar Basuki di kantornya, Senin (3/6/2013) siang.

Rencana pesta rakyat tersebut, lanjutnya, dimulai dari keprihatinan terhadap karakteristik budaya Betawi yang kian minim di PRJ. Padahal, PRJ digelar untuk memperingati HUT DKI Jakarta. Oleh karena itu, Pemprov DKI berencana untuk menyelaraskan PRJ dengan pesta rakyat.

"Mulai tahun ini kita susun ada festival rakyat, ada car free night. Jadi, kalau JIExpo pameran, silakan pameran saja. Kita punya konsep sendiri yang sifatnya lebih kerakyatan," ujar Basuki.

Jika masuk ke arena PRJ harus merogoh kocek, pria yang akrab disapa Ahok tersebut menegaskan bahwa di pesta rakyat nantinya pengunjung tak dipungut biaya alias gratis. Kebijakan itu dilakukan agar seluruh warga DKI bisa turut menikmati kemeriahan HUT kotanya.

"Kalau sekarang, yang bisa masuk Jakarta Fair kan hanya kalangan atas. Yang kalangan bawah kan tidak menikmati HUT DKI. Maka, kita ingin tak terlalu elite dan enggak bayar," ujarnya.

Menurut rencana, pesta rakyat tersebut akan digelar pada HUT DKI Jakarta tahun 2014. Pesta rakyat tersebut direncanakan menggunakan pelataran Monas. Jika di PRJ stan yang ada berasal dari perusahaan raksasa, di pesta rakyat ini stan yang digelar lebih berlandaskan budaya, misalnya pameran kesenian.

Meski demikian, Basuki yang merupakan mantan anggota DPR tersebut mengatakan, pihaknya masih akan melakukan kajian mendalam terkait rencana pergelaran pesta rakyat itu, mulai dari konsep acara hingga teknis pelaksanaan.

Editor :Liwon Maulana

Sumber:Kompas.com

From sea to shining sea, or at least from one side of the Hudson to the other, politicians you have barely heard of are being accused of wrongdoing. There were so many court proceedings involving public officials on Monday that it was hard to keep up.

In Newark, two underlings of Gov. Chris Christie were arraigned on charges that they were in on the truly deranged plot to block traffic leading onto the George Washington Bridge.

Ten miles away, in Lower Manhattan, Dean G. Skelos, the leader of the New York State Senate, and his son, Adam B. Skelos, were arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on accusations of far more conventional political larceny, involving a job with a sewer company for the son and commissions on title insurance and bond work.

The younger man managed to receive a 150 percent pay increase from the sewer company even though, as he said on tape, he “literally knew nothing about water or, you know, any of that stuff,” according to a criminal complaint the United States attorney’s office filed.

The success of Adam Skelos, 32, was attributed by prosecutors to his father’s influence as the leader of the Senate and as a potentate among state Republicans. The indictment can also be read as one of those unfailingly sad tales of a father who cannot stop indulging a grown son. The senator himself is not alleged to have profited from the schemes, except by being relieved of the burden of underwriting Adam.

The bridge traffic caper is its own species of crazy; what distinguishes the charges against the two Skeloses is the apparent absence of a survival instinct. It is one thing not to know anything about water or that stuff. More remarkable, if true, is the fact that the sewer machinations continued even after the former New York Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, was charged in January with taking bribes disguised as fees.

It was by then common gossip in political and news media circles that Senator Skelos, a Republican, the counterpart in the Senate to Mr. Silver, a Democrat, in the Assembly, could be next in line for the criminal dock. “Stay tuned,” the United States attorney, Preet Bharara said, leaving not much to the imagination.

Even though the cat had been unmistakably belled, Skelos father and son continued to talk about how to advance the interests of the sewer company, though the son did begin to use a burner cellphone, the kind people pay for in cash, with no traceable contracts.

That was indeed prudent, as prosecutors had been wiretapping the cellphones of both men. But it would seem that the burner was of limited value, because by then the prosecutors had managed to secure the help of a business executive who agreed to record calls with the Skeloses. It would further seem that the business executive was more attentive to the perils of pending investigations than the politician.

Through the end of the New York State budget negotiations in March, the hopes of the younger Skelos rested on his father’s ability to devise legislation that would benefit the sewer company. That did not pan out. But Senator Skelos did boast that he had haggled with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, in a successful effort to raise a $150 million allocation for Long Island to $550 million, for what the budget called “transformative economic development projects.” It included money for the kind of work done by the sewer company.

The lawyer for Adam Skelos said he was not guilty and would win in court. Senator Skelos issued a ringing declaration that he was unequivocally innocent.

THIS was also the approach taken in New Jersey by Bill Baroni, a man of great presence and eloquence who stopped outside the federal courthouse to note that he had taken risks as a Republican by bucking his party to support paid family leave, medical marijuana and marriage equality. “I would never risk my career, my job, my reputation for something like this,” Mr. Baroni said. “I am an innocent man.”

The lawyer for his co-defendant, Bridget Anne Kelly, the former deputy chief of staff to Mr. Christie, a Republican, said that she would strongly rebut the charges.

Perhaps they had nothing to do with the lane closings. But neither Mr. Baroni nor Ms. Kelly addressed the question of why they did not return repeated calls from the mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., begging them to stop the traffic tie-ups, over three days.

That silence was a low moment. But perhaps New York hit bottom faster. Senator Skelos, the prosecutors charged, arranged to meet Long Island politicians at the wake of Wenjian Liu, a New York City police officer shot dead in December, to press for payments to the company employing his son.

Sometimes it seems as though for some people, the only thing to be ashamed of is shame itself.