Indonesia's 79th Independence Day to Mark Transition to Welcome the New Capital: OIKN

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Indonesia's 79th Independence Day ceremony on August 17, 2024, will be the moment to welcome Nusantara as the new capital for the nation, according to acting deputy head of the Nusantara Capital Authority (OIKN), Raja Juli Antoni.

This year, the Independence Day ceremony will take place in both Nusantara and the current national capital Jakarta.

"It is a ceremony of transition to bid our welcome to the new capital," Antoni said after attending the 2024 Agrarian Reform Summit agenda on Saturday, June 15, 2024.

The unusual step to hold the Independence Day ceremony at two different cities has been taken to pay homage to Jakarta, which has served as the national capital for decades, for its contribution to national development and progress, he explained.

President Joko Widodo, accompanied by President-elect Prabowo Subianto, will preside over the ceremony in Nusantara, while Vice President Ma'ruf Amin will chair the ceremony in Jakarta together with Vice President-elect Gibran Rakabuming Raka, he noted.

He said that Indonesia's 80th Independence Day ceremony in 2025 will be the first to be fully hosted at the new capital.

"God Willing, next year, the ceremony will be fully in Nusantara city," he remarked.

President Joko Widodo earlier said that Nusantara will serve as the sole host of the 2025 Independence Day national ceremony after a presidential decree on the transfer of the capital city is issued.

Meanwhile, the Public Works and Public Housing Ministry has taken the requisite measures to make the presidential palace in Nusantara a viable option for the president to stay before or after the commemoration of Independence Day, though the head of state has not announced any plan to do so.

"We have prepared it (the palace)," head of the ministry's executive task force for Nusantara city infrastructure development, Danis Sumadilaga, said on Friday.

Sumadilaga added that the construction of the palace's main building reached 73 percent completion as of June 6.

He informed that overall, the development of the Presidential Palace Complex is 80 percent complete, with work on the complex's Presidential Office nearly 90 percent finished.

ANTARA

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