Since last week, members of the Jakarta City Council have been pushing for new regulations that would see all of the capital’s nightlife entertainment venues forced to close at midnight (currently they are allowed to stay open until 3am). The new regulations, which would alter the city’s bylaws on tourism, is set to be ratified this Friday.
The moral crusaders pushing the new regulation, led by Deputy Speaker Mohammad Taufik (who was convicted on corruption charges in 2004) have argued that city’s “diskoteks” are all havens of drug distribution and that forcing them to close early would help stop the spread of narcotics in Jakarta.
One prominent opponent of the proposed regulations is Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama. He argues that restricting the operating hours of nightlife entertainment venues would not guarantee an end to drug abuse.
“Why should cafes, discotheques and hotels be limited to midnight? If you say the reason is drug trafficking, that means Jakarta should not have any apartments either, since it turns out that drug trafficking is rampant in flats,” Ahok said on Saturday as quoted by Kompas.
The governor argued that the best way to prevent the spread of drugs in clubs was to heavily sanction venues where drugs have been repeatedly found. Ahok has said many times that he would shut down any clubs where drugs were found more than twice.
The governor proved how serious he was about this policy when he shut down the infamous Stadium Nightclub after a police officer was found to have overdosed in the club, and then again when he prevented Stadium’s owner from reopening the club under a different name.
Anybody with any knowledge of the Jakarta club scene knows that they rarely get busy until after midnight (you know, when the traffic actually dies down a bit) and that forcing them to close that early would be devastating to a major sector of the city’s economy.
Hopefully the governor’s sensible words will help prevent the new regulation from being passed, but more likely it will be the powerful parties that own many of the city’s nightlife venues that will see it stopped. If they don’t, Jakarta is about to become a much more boring place to live.
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