Jakarta’s man of the moment is a reasonably safe bet for Australia

Joko Widodo has been successful and popular as both the mayor of Solo and the Governor of Jakarta.

JOKO Widodo, Jokowi, the Governor of Jakarta, is almost certainly the new president of Indonesia. Is he Indonesia’s Barack Obama — the triumph of hope — or its John F. Kennedy, the voice of a new generation? Is he, perhaps, its Harry Truman, the plain haberdasher or, in Jokowi’s case, furniture maker whom history chose for greatness?

Or is he none of those things but, rather, a shrewd, professional, Indonesian politician who has just won the world’s second biggest direct election?

Of course, it’s not quite won yet. In Indonesia, everything flows, nothing is ever simple. It never disappoints if you’re looking for colour and movement and drama.

Jokowi looks like he beat the former general Prabowo Subianto. The reputable quick count organisations give Jokowi 52 or 53 per cent of the vote and Prabowo 47 or 48 per cent. These organisations are much more accurate than exit polls. They place observers in about 2000 of the nearly half million polling stations across Indonesia. The observers record the quick counting of huge numbers of votes, a simple process in a two-horse race. This has happened in the last three elections and in the legislative polls they were accurate to within 1 per cent.

A couple of quick count organisations give a much narrower win to Prabowo, who, like Jokowi, has claimed victory. But these organisations are less reputable and tied to Prabowo or his backers.

Prabowo is the old Indonesia, Jokowi is the new Indonesia.

Prabowo is the scion of a leading family. He married Suharto’s daughter. He led Indonesia’s special forces. He was implicated in the kidnapping of student protesters at the time of Suharto’s downfall and subsequently ushered out of the army. Troops under his command were brutal in East Timor and Papua.

But he is an electrifying orator and projects decisiveness: a new Suharto or, with his grandiloquent oratory, for some a new Sukarno. He has spent a decade rehabilitating himself. Some of his old enemies work for him. His emissaries made a big effort in Washington. He reached out to senior people on both sides of Australian politics. Despite his troubling past, had he been elected he may well have been a centrist, sensible president.

Jokowi could not be more different. He is a product of the new, democratic Indonesia. He ran, essentially on behalf of the small-business community, as mayor of Solo, a medium-sized city, and won a surprise victory. He was an effective mayor who was socially, religiously and ethnically inclusive, without making the symbolism of that a fetish. He was re-elected in a landslide. Then, to general astonishment, he ran as an outsider for governor of Jakarta, with a Chinese running mate, against a well-regarded incumbent, and he won that election too.

Could Prabowo forces possibly steal this election?

My friends in Jakarta tell me that’s unlikely. The electoral commission has promised it will announce a final result by July 21 or 22. The electorate was 170 million potential voters. The turnout was more than 70 per cent. To reverse a victory of 5 per cent or so would mean stuffing millions of ballots. While forces loyal to Prabowo have vast financial resources, ­armies of pro-Jokowi activists will be scrutinising all the counting and photographing everything on their mobile phones.

The electoral commission has performed pretty well in Indonesia, and these vast elections, in a tight and divisive campaign, were held smoothly, all on one day, with no serious incidents. Now everyone — Jokowi’s supporters, the police, the powerful anti-corruption commission, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono — will be watching the electoral commission intensely.

That’s good. Indonesia will probably get an honest result.

Some of this will be appealed to the Constitutional Court. Its last chief justice was recently sentenced to life imprisonment for corruption, especially taking bribes to change election results. That unfortunate case has sapped some of the court’s credibility, but the investigation, prosecution and conviction is also a victory for Indonesian justice and it does mean it is extremely unlikely the court will be tempted to misbehave in any way in this matter.

There is also the simple fact that Indonesia would explode if the election were to be stolen.

So what sort of president will Jokowi make?

I interviewed him at length a couple of months ago. It’s hard to judge someone on a single meeting. But like most people who have met Jokowi, I assessed him to be a modest, decent, genuine, down-to-earth person, devoted to duty and trying hard to make things better for his constituents, especially the poor.

He was deeply enthralled by the city’s many challenges, and by his use of social media to communicate with his constituents, even the poor, but he was reluctant to talk about any national policy issue and resolutely refused to discuss foreign policy at all. Nonetheless it was at a time of a good bit of Australia-bashing in Jakarta over the boats turnback policy, and it was striking that he would not go near that issue either.

Jokowi ran as the candidate of the Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), a more or less wholly owned subsidiary of the family of Megawati Sukarnoputri, Sukarno’s daughter and herself a former president. The rumours about Jokowi and Mega’s relationship are endless and gothic: Did she want to run herself? Did she fully commit the party to his cause? Did she endorse him too late — just before the parliamentary elections, to get a bounce for the PDI-P? Above all, what will her influence be in the future?

At any time Jakarta is a city of magnificent rumours, of conspiracies beyond number, bewildering in their complexity, and personal cross-currents. They are endlessly intriguing, but it’s always hard to know which ones to believe.

But after many conversations with Indonesian friends this week, I got a version of not so much a conspiracy but a liberal political project in four parts.

The first was to destroy the old alliance between Mega and Prabowo. The ex-general had been Mega’s vice-presidential running mate at the last election. Prabowo told people privately that Mega promised to back him this time if he backed her last time. The Jakarta liberal elite was aghast at the idea of a Prabowo presidency. And although PDI-P is in many ways compromised by its dynastic character — like India’s Congress party under the Gandhis — it remains the biggest mainstream secular, nationalist, more or less liberal political party. So detaching Mega and Prabowo was task No 1.

The second was to secure Jusuf Kalla as Jokowi’s vice-presidential candidate. “This was necessary because we know what sort of man Jokowi is,’’ one absolute insider tells me.

By this he doesn’t mean that Jokowi is a bad guy, but that he has very limited experience of national issues and running government. Jokowi, one insider says to me, is a lot like SBY. At his best he produces consensus and reconciliation, rather than being the natural day-to-day driver of administration. Kalla was an extremely effective vice-president in SBY’s first term, and is a former head of Golkar, still Indonesia’s best funded and best organised political party (Golkar backed Prabowo this time). Indeed it is a high order executive skill of Jokowi that he always chooses a highly competent No 2. The third part of the agenda was to get Jokowi elected, and the fourth to produce internal change in Golkar. Now that Prabowo has lost, Kalla or his friends could take control of Golkar again and bring it into Jokowi’s camp.

What sort of administration will Jokowi run?

It’s likely to be better than we fear, worse than we hope. Jokowi says he hasn’t made any promises of cabinet positions. His cabinet will not, like SBY’s, involve a fine political balance among the political parties. It is likely to have three components. One is genuine technocrats chosen on merit. Two is NGO and civil society figures who have some standing beyond politics. And three will be traditional political appointees, quite probably needing at least the blessing of Mega, if they are not appointed by her altogether.

Jokowi, like Prabowo, talks a lot of nationalism in economic policy. But Indonesia has very strong technocrat economists in key institutions and they have a lot of credibility. Both Jokowi and Kalla are business-friendly. Indonesia has a strong tradition now of reasonable macro-economic management. The economic times are not as easy for Indonesia as during the resources boom. Policy will be a traditional, slightly messy mix of liberalism, orthodoxy and nationalism.

And relations with Australia? Jokowi shows little interest in foreign affairs. He will be orthodox, moderate and temperate. His personal disposition is preternaturally calm. Marty Natalegawa, said to be liked by Mega and to have reached out to Jokowi, could stay on as foreign minister to provide continuity. Rizal Sukma, a key Jokowi adviser, think-tank figure and Muslim organisation leader, is a candidate but probably prefers being influential at home to roaming the world. But mark, too, the name of Arif Havas Oegroseno, an extremely tough minded diplomat, quite different from Marty, as a strong candidate.

Australia has benefited from SBY’s long tenure. But a new president brings us opportunities as well as challenges. Jokowi, like Obama, will inevitably disappoint at some levels. But so far, he’s a winner and his election is an authentic triumph of democracy and liberalism. That surely is a good thing for Australia.