Mega machinations amplify follies of Indonesia’s Joko Widodo

Mega machinations amplify follies

Joko Widodo has fallen from such a great height because many initial expectations of Indonesia’s new President were unrealistic and overlooked his underlying political fragility.

Jokowi, as the former furniture trader from Solo is known everywhere here, suffers what political scientist Djayadi Hanan calls “the triple minority problem”: “He’s in a minority in his own party and finds it very difficult dealing with the grandmother (party leader Megawati Sukarnoputri). He has a minority in the parliament and he’s the new kid on the block.”

Joko has few personal linkages into Jakarta’s political and business elites. Megawati, leader of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), fifth president of the republic, has those connections and last year she badly wanted another shot at office.

She was grudgingly persuaded by Jokowi’s soaring popularity to hand over the party’s nomination. But the price of her concession, particularly her meddling in presidential appointments, has been remarkably damaging.

Jokowi’s fundamental problem, though, is the economy. Twelve months ago, it was faltering already against strengthening headwinds from abroad and hobbled at home by scant and rickety infrastructure — among the region’s worst for transport and electricity — and chronic maladministration. For the first time in six years, growth has slipped below 5 per cent, a red line. Bank Indonesia governor Agus Martowardojo says the vast, youthful, recently fractious nation needs constant 6 per cent-plus growth to escape the “middle income trap” that catches developing countries after the fast early stages of economic takeoff.

The President also has been forced into several serious errors by his compromised political position and poor judgment.

Jokowi promised a “mental revolution”, no less, to sweep away legacies of the Suharto New Order regime that fell in 1998 — corruption, greed, quick resort to violence — as well as “liberal values … contradictory to Indonesia’s values, culture and character”.

“Using the term revolution is not excessive,” he wrote before last year’s July 9 presidential election. “Because Indonesia needs a political culture breakthrough to eliminate all the bad practices that have grown for too long since (the) New Order era until now.”

What followed, from Jokowi’s poorly handled first cabinet selection to the worst moment of his first year, nominating a corruption-tainted national police chief, looked more like legacy practices than mental revolution.

However, recent stop-loss measures appear to have stabilised his position, and the tentative feeling around Jakarta’s business groups, investment firms, consultancies and embassies is that the Joko administration has stopped tumbling downhill — for now.

The change in momentum is too recent to be reflected in public opinion. If people are asked to rate Joko’s first year, the reference point is how they felt last October when he was inaugurated, and the chief response is disappointment.

Djayadi, executive director of Saiful Mujani Research & Consulting, says disappointment is felt most keenly among the younger, urbanised, aspirational people who surged Jokowi across the line in the election. Many didn’t come on board until very late, though Joko’s popularity across the demographics gave him a 20-point head start before nominations were ­finalised as a two-way contest between him and former army general Prabowo Subianto.

Joko seemed made for the moment. Aged 53 in a nation with a median age of less than 30 years, he was a half-generation younger than Prabowo and Megawati.

He would be the first leader from outside military, political or religious elite circles — indeed, from outside national politics, rising in nine years from mayor of Solo, Central Java, to Jakarta governor. Joko had no corruption in his background, a reputation for doing good things quickly in his cities, an easy and apparently direct manner with constituents but a calculating toughness beneath. He had, after all, bluffed Megawati into surrendering the nomination.

He was defined even more sharply by the presence of Prabowo, founder of the Gerindra (Greater Indonesia Movement) party, an ex-military man with a dark history from the late Suharto era, not an entirely convincing convert to democracy.

Different as he seemed, however, Joko wasn’t different enough for many, even in civil society.

Haris Azhar, co-ordinator of human rights defender KontraS, says his group campaigned against Prabowo — “the face of abusers — rather than for Jokowi, who had “abusers in his circle”. He cites former National Intelligence Agency chief Hendropriyono and Wiranto, chief of the army at the time of Suharto’s fall.

Haris was and remains suspicious of Joko’s reluctance to commit to specific human rights and justice measures: “We have to run from Prabowo, but with Jokowi we have to run after him.”

Hold-out progressives came aboard only in the final fortnight of the campaign, seeing Prabowo’s meticulous campaign, featuring a ruthless anti-Joko “black operation”, overrunning the poorly managed Jokowi campaign. He defeated Prabowo 53 per cent to 47 per cent, the tightest margin in the brief history of direct presidential elections, and the self-mobilisation of younger progressives probably made the difference.

In the past month, however, many of the better-off ones have been out at lunchtime buying US dollars, hedging against another currency slide. They kept buying last week even after the rupiah recovered from 14,660 to the US dollar, its lowest level since 1998. “I decided I had to do it anyway,” says one young woman. “We all know this (rebound) won’t last.”

Neither the underlying conditions nor the general mood are ­remotely like those grim end-of-century times, of course. Disenchantment with a democratic president isn’t the same as the sickening fear of post-authoritarian social collapse; Indonesia is more at peace with itself, more confident of the future, than during any other decade since independence. But a middle class that checks daily currency movements and switches spare savings into dollars is symptomatic of a nation worried about its government’s ability to manage. That is different from the years bridging Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s first and second terms, when growth hummed, inflation was relatively tame, foreign investors were piling in and wage-paying jobs, not just menial toil in the “informal economy”, expanded quickly.

At street level, the consistent demands Indonesian voters have of a president are job creation, stable basic prices and curbing official corruption. However, a first anniversary survey by polling company Indo Barometer found another significant concern: the performance of ministers and Jokowi’s perceived weak control of them. Indo Barometer shows Jokowi’s public satisfaction still slumping, from 57.5 per cent in March, when objectively the administration was at its shakiest, to 46 per cent in mid-September.

Cabinet satisfaction fell 10 points to 37 per cent, which might sting the President a little more because the first step in his reboot five weeks ago was a cabinet overhaul in which three of the four senior co-ordinating ministers were changed.

It was Jokowi’s first cabinet that gave rise to perceptions of a compromiser, in hock to a powerful party leader and her friends. During the campaign Joko had insisted his cabinet would be chosen on the basis of talent, with no ministries traded for support in parliament and no room for anyone suspected of corruption.

That proved undeliverable. PDI-P’s parliamentary strength was insufficient to muster the numbers required for Jokowi’s nomination or to control the commissions that do most of the legislative work. Joko managed to appoint a cabinet without “red flags” from KPK, the anti-corruption commission. Otherwise he fell badly short.

Almost half his appointments came from PDI-P and key smaller parties or were Megawati confidants. Vice-President Jusuf Kalla, the veteran forced on a resentful Jokowi by Megawati’s clique, placed several associates. Joko and Kalla negotiated this outcome with the 68-year-old Megawati at her Jakarta house. Her daughter Puan Maharani, leader of PDI-P’s parliamentary faction, condescendingly described the new President as “a party cadre”.

Puan gained a senior ministry while Megawati vetoed Jokowi’s choice of Luhut Pandjaitan as coordinating minister for politics, security and legal matters, potentially the most powerful cabinet position. Luhut, a former New Order general and businessman who befriended Joko in the Solo days, is the President’s most highly connected associate — and one he trusts.

Last December Joko stumbled again, vowing never to pardon any drug criminal from death row (there were then 64). Fourteen executions followed including, in April, Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

This time the basic fault was Joko’s, though Haris is convinced he was badly misled about the ­process and consequences by Attorney-General Muhammad Pra­setyo, a former prosecutor. Though he correctly judged that executions would be popular with the narcotics-fearing majority, Joko seemed to completely misread the severe international consequences for his and Indonesia’s reputation, or the particular cost to relations with Australia as well as Brazil and The Netherlands, whose citizens were also killed.

Although Prasetyo then marked five murderers for execution and recently asked for budget funds sufficient to kill 14 people next year, there has been no other movement since May. Haris, well-connected with liberal elements of the administration, believes Luhut and presidential chief-of-staff Teten Masduki will prevent more executions.

In February Megawati prevailed on Joko to nominate Budi Gunawan, formerly her presidential security adjutant, for national police chief. What followed was almost fatal for his reformist credentials. Gunawan’s wealth was a matter of notoriety and KPK had him under investigation. Although he passed a fit-and-proper vote in parliament, KPK named him an official corruption suspect. Joko sidelined the nomination.

The police went into full attack mode, activating criminal cases against KPK chairman Abraham Samad and the other commissioners that clearly had been prepared for just such an eventuality. Gunawan’s key associate, chief of detectives Budi Waseso, defied a presidential instruction to cease “criminalising” KPK officials, cheered along by MPs who, as potential corruption suspects, have been unrelenting in attempts to defang the commission.

The confrontation came to an unsatisfactory end through abject compromise. Gunawan was appointed deputy police chief, his suspect status withdrawn. Samad was replaced with a predecessor who had left the police alone. It was a damaging episode. Senior police had thuggishly flouted presidential authority and KPK, the only public institution that retains strong public trust, remains significantly impaired.

Megawati humiliated Jokowi at the party’s April convention in Bali by reminding him that he was “not voted in as an independent” and “the President and Vice-President are carried by political parties”. Other Megawati confidants noted Joko did not seek her counsel and closed his door to other party elders. This prompted shrewd Jakarta political consultant Paul Rowland to observe: “Jokowi’s tragedy is that Mega pays far more attention to his presidency than she did to her own.”

In the past two months, however, the balance of political fortunes seems to have shifted. A smaller political party, PAN, has joined the government coalition and a split in the leadership of Golkar seems to have divided the second largest party between the administration and Prabowo’s opposition group. Those two elements also are not well disposed towards Megawati, offering Joko the prospect of a solid parliamentary majority less dominated by Ibu Mega’s PDI-P loyalists.

He has brought in three well-received economic packages seeking to address Indonesia’s investment malaise and grassroots unhappiness. Last month’s ministerial reshuffle contained several messages for Megawati. There was no longer ostentatious “consultation” and Luhut gained the ministerial post Joko originally intended. He appointed a Megawati associate, Pramono Anung, as cabinet secretary — a bridge to the party but consisting of a skilled, pragmatic operator.

PDIP’s dependability remains a problem. Its MPs recently joined in drafting a revision to the KPK law blatantly intended to weaken the commission further. Paradoxically, this gave Joko the opportunity to reject the draft and realign himself with KPK and “the people’s interests”, as one commentator put it.

But perhaps Jokowi’s best asset is that most Indonesians still want him to succeed, Djayadi says. His firm’s recent polling shows that while 56 per cent were dissatisfied with the first year, the same proportion were confident Joko could be an effective president. Only 13 per cent wanted him removed. “This shows Indonesians are critical but they are not anarchists.”

Joko is stabilising his political environment and, Djayadi warns, that is critical because he needs no more distractions as the economy continues to deteriorate.

Indonesians are prepared to give Jokowi another chance but the year ahead is probably the limit of their patience.