Jakarta has earned the dubious honor of being named the city with the worst traffic congestion in the world according to a new study by the British motor-oil company Castrol.

Moh. Ilyas, Jakarta – The inauguration of Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok) as the new governor of Jakarta was marked by a protest action by residents who have been affected by evictions for city development programs.

With hordes of cheap, new cars and motorcycles continuing to hit the city’s streets, and the two rail-based public transit networks not expected to be ready until at least 2016, experts have warned that Jakarta faces total gridlock in 2014.

Man: Where to this Jakarta?

In what is becoming a depressingly regular event with the onset of the rainy season each year, torrential rains over the weekend triggered widespread flooding and traffic gridlock throughout much of Jakarta, including the central business district with its iconic Welcome Monument, which is not among the city’s 78 flood-prone areas.

In addition to the myriad of social and economic problems that plague the capital, newly elected Jakarta governor and deputy governor Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo (right) and Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama (left) also face what some observers have called the ‘triad of dark forces’ – business interests that have enjoyed decades of rampant unregulated deve

Man: High tides? Ahh, it’ll be safe enough until [the] 2014 [elections]

Man: I wander what that pepesan tastes like?

Sign: Apartment of Lies (empty pepesan) – referring to food, mostly fish, cooked in banana leafs, pepesan kosong – “looks tasty but nothing inside”, a lie or bluff.

Rampant unregulated urban development, which environmentalists blame on widespread collusion between city officials and the business elite, has resulted in Jakarta loosing 28% of its green space over the last 25 years – much of it replaced by shopping malls, luxury apartments and government offices.

Man: Raft-Way, why not...