Negotiating urban collective memory in National Monument Park

In late April 2017, the capital city of Indonesia, Jakarta, witnessed a new phenomenon of thousands
of flower-boards with various ‘thank-you’ notes, being sent to the city hall by the people, to the thengovernor
and
vice
governor
of
Jakarta,
who
had
just
lost
the
local
government direct
election
in
their

attempt
to
run
for
the
office
for
the
second
term.
The
city
hall
was
not
big
enough,
so
the
flowerboards
were
displayed
in
the
National
Monument
Park
across
the
city
hall,
which
has
always
been

public
park
since
the
era
of
Dutch
Colonialization
Era.
The
Park
turned
into
a
flower-display
ground

that

attracted visitors from various part of the metropolitan. The ‘thank-you’ flower-boards
symbolized a silent counter-movement of the people, as a respond towards another group of
protesters who had been campaigning for the ‘Defend Movement for Islam’ with their massive
demonstration in December 2016 in the same ground of The National Monument Park, demanding
that the then-governor of Jakarta be trialed for blasphemy of the religion. This paper highlights the
process of re-constructing collective memory of Jakarta people on the National Monument Park
through a silent counter-movement using flower-boards as a medium of negotiation. This paper
questions: who takes what part and how in the making of the ‘new’ collective memory; who are
in(ex)cluded from collective memory by whom and how.