Less than a year out from the presidential poll scheduled for July, the race appears likely to be a contest between elite party figures who came of age during the Suharto era and a man who is as much an anti-establishment outsider as a national politician can effectively be in Indonesia.
The latter is Joko Widodo, the recently elected Jakarta governor, who has made this election exciting and whose political ascendancy makes a decisive break with the past a possibility in 2014. ‘Jokowi’ (as he is universally known) has a rags-to-riches back story that is a political consultant’s dream. Born on a riverside slum in the Central Java city of Solo, he graduated with a forestry degree before starting a furniture manufacturing business that eventually made him a millionaire. He was recruited by former president Megawati Sukarnoputri’s PDI-P party to run as mayor of Solo in 2005, and thanks to a program of improving public services and reducing corruption was reelected in 2010 with over 90 per cent of the votes.
Jokowi has shown more talent for using elected office to gain positive media coverage than any other politician in post-Suharto Indonesia. His personal style is key to this: folksy and self-effacing, he is the antithesis of the stereotypically officious and well-heeled Indonesian politician. By ordinary Indonesians, he is universally described as merakyat (down to earth); in particular, people remember gestures such as his declining to draw a salary while mayor, and transporting his spartan homemade furniture to his official residence in Jakarta after being elected governor there in 2012.
The remarkable speed of his rise has come mainly at the expense of the erstwhile presidential front runner, the Gerindra party boss Prabowo Subianto. As a former son-in-law of Suharto, Prabowo’s New Order credentials are unimpeachable. The redoubtable and polarising former special forces general stands accused of serious human rights abuses during the New Order. But he has sought to reinvent himself as a populist democrat, with financial backing from his energy tycoon brother (himself a Suharto family crony) allowing Prabowo to establish his own political party and to advertise heavily on national television to promote an image of himself as a tegas (firm, tough) leader to carry the nation to prosperity in the style of a Thaksin or Chavez.
Unfortunately for Prabowo, his attempt to burnish his reformist credentials by sponsoring Jokowi’s 2012 Jakarta campaign has backfired for him. The national media gave extensive coverage of the Jakarta race, and the tale of the plucky small-town mayor whose grassroots campaign defeated the capital’s formidable patronage machine was beamed into Indonesian homes from one end of the country to the other. Polls now show Jokowi shooting ahead of Prabowo. The latter’s only hope is that Jokowi does not get to run. At the time of writing, Jokowi’s supporters are nervously awaiting Megawati’s decision on whether or not to give her blessing to his candidacy. Polling shows that his popularity will carry the secular-nationalist PDI-P to huge gains in national and regional legislatures, but Megawati may be concerned about losing control of the party to him in the future.
In the end, Jokowi is now such an asset to the party that she might have little choice. A hint of a populist dynamic is beginning to be seen. Opponents within the Jakarta elite are reluctant to attack him publicly. As a former advisor to Jokowi put it: ‘he is atas angin [above the fray]. Anybody who attacks him will be seen as the bad guy’. Even rejection from his own party’s establishment, in the event of a conflict, will only enhance his standing as the ‘people’s candidate’, the anti-politician politician.
Unsurprisingly, Jokowi’s links to politico-business establishment figures are closer than his populist image would suggest. But his ascendency nevertheless represents a turning point in Indonesian politics. Most presidential candidates before him have been party, corporate or military elites (or combinations thereof) who came of age during the Suharto era. Never has an elected regional leader, such as a mayor or governor, been a serious contender for the presidency. The lesson of Joko Widodo is that a successful career in regional politics (and, critically, the free publicity that a smart politician can gain from one) is now an effective way to gain an appealing public profile on the national stage with the democratic legitimacy that a mere cashed-up party boss lacks. If Joko Widodo runs, he will win, and in doing so force some of Indonesia’s ancien regime elites into a long-overdue political retirement.
Liam Gammon is a PhD candidate at the ANU College of Asia & the Pacific.
Jokowi’s emergence is not the first turning-point that Indonesia’s post-Soeharto politics has produced. SBY’s election in 2004 was also a turning-point. He was elected in the first direct presidential poll, he defeated an incumbent of whose cabinet he had until recently been a member, his party had not been long in existence and he was enormously popular. His re-election in 2009 was another turning-point as he won outright in the first round of the two-round election, setting an enviable precedent.
Regrettably, however,turning-points don’t always deliver on their presumed promise. SBY’s second term is not quite ending in glory. SBY offers a splendid example of great electoral popularity not translating into great presidential vigour and audacity.
The retirement of various over-familiar political figures, which the writer of this post predicts, will indeed be very welcome. But the success of the Jokowi turning-point will depend on the substance of his rule rather than simply on the exit from the stage of those power-grasping veterans. Unfortunately, we have little to guide us about what the substance of Jokowi’s rule might be.
Only a rash observer would seek to read Megawati’s inscrutable mind, in which terrain she makes even Soeharto look like an open book. It seems, however, that she is set on announcing her presidential nominee only after April’s parliamentary poll. This looks like a miscalculation, and a serious one. The PDIP needs as large a majority in parliament as it can possibly obtain. And this will be easier to come by if voters already know in April that Jokowi will be the PDIP’s presidential candidate. If the party is forced into a coalition, the prospect of authoritative government will be far from assured, even if Jokowi is at the helm. Although we don’t know how suited Jokowi is to wielding presidential power, he will undoubtedly be more effective if he is not forced to compromise time and again with refractory coalition allies.
Hello, I’m from Indonesia and I have to say I’m really looking forward to voting Jokowi as the next President (if Megawati would come to her senses and put him into the contest). But that seems to be more likely to happen judging from what she has been doing lately such as praising Jokowi, and even say that Jokowi has the same “genes” as Sukarno.