Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, worried that the minimarket beer ban may create a black market, announced that he was considering the establishment of special stores to sell alcoholic beverages, especially beer, in the capital.
“We are examine the idea of creating, as they do abroad, the creation of special stores that sell beer. Overseas there are specialty store that specialize in selling beer,” Ahok said at City Hall today as quoted by Okezone.
The governor said the stores would be made in such a way as to respect the Ministry of Trade’s ban on selling beer in minimarkets, which went into effect today.
Ahok was sure to emphasize that not just anybody could buy beer from his planned specialty shops. He said those who were under the age of 21 or who didn’t have an ID card wouldn’t even be allowed into the store.
This would answer the Trade Ministry’s main justification for the minimarket beer ban, which was that it would make it harder for children to buy alcohol.
Surprisingly, one of the first politicians to support Ahok’s alcohol store plan came from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), one of the conservative Islamic political parties that also introduced the anti-alcohol bill currently working its way through the DPR.
However, support for the stores would come with some strict conditions, as explained by PKS politician Selamat Nurdin.
Selamat said such specialty stores might work, but only if they followed applicable zoning regulations and were not located anywhere near schools, places of worship or their surrounding neighborhoods.
“The most important thing is that the [specialty alcohol stores] should not be located in places easily found by many parties. If kept in certain places, it could be considered a kind of drug store,” Selamat said, as quoted by Kompas.
While it might not replace the convenience of minimarket beers, this idea does seem like a reasonable compromise that all parties might agree on. How often does that happen in Jakarta?
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