Book summary: Jokowi and the new Indonesia

Book summary: This new official biography tells the story of how the boy from the riverbank made it to the presidential palace in record time. Readers will learn how his personal background and heritage have created a distinctive style of politics and informed his ambitious development goals--including massive infrastructure projects, universal healthcare and a reimagining of Indonesia's educational system. It also looks at how a man raised with a traditionally Javanese worldview negotiates the tensions, contradictions and conflicts of this vast archipelagic nation.

Indonesia's political parties

Given that Indonesia is, by a significant margin, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, it might be assumed that Islam would be the major political driver. However, this has never really been the case.

Although political Islam was an element of the independence movement,

Sukarno and the other key leaders saw it as potentially divisive and politically limiting, and tended to sideline specifically Muslim agendas,

for example, in the formulation of Pancasila. Suharto was similarly disinclined to indulge the interests of political Islam for most of his rule.

Consequently, the main Muslim parties have tended to reduce the centrality of Islam to their ideology over the years.

They typically campaign on general social, economic and developmental issues, and may attract non-Muslim voters and even non-Muslim members and candidates

Mayor of Surakata

Jokowi was initially reluctant.

He tended to see politics as a world of meaningless noise and competing interests, a world full of chaotic conflict and jostling action.

This perception of the political world is a common one in Indonesia. Jokowi’s personal interactions with the authorities had also colored his view.

He had observed the brutality of Indonesian politics. Surakata had been one of the places worst affected by the rioting and looting of 1998. Jokowi had also seen the initial public optimism of the Reformasi period revert rapidly to cynicism.

Jokowi recognised that politics at base, in the mode of Indonesia’s revolutionary heroes who went on to become its first generation of civilian leaders, was supposed to be about

liberation, social justice and a shared sense of purpose. More practically, governance is about problem-solving, and in his own business and in his industry leadership role.

Jokowi had a clear track record for that. He had developed the common conviction that, if he were ever given the chance, he would be able to make a better job of it than the people currently in power.

Excellent track record

Although not every one of Jokowi’s efforts in Surakata was an unqualified success, there were few who would have disputed the idea that the city had palpably changed for the better by the end of his first term.

After just five years, the city had been identified both nationally and internationally as an example of best practice in city governance and used as a case study in Indonesian and foreign universities.

It had been a rare example in Indonesia of a genuinely transformational mayoral term and an apparent success story of decentralisation and Reformasi.

It was no surprise when Jokowi was re-elected for a 2nd term as mayor of Surakata in 2010.

But the scale of the victory was an astonishing indication of public approval: the pairing took 90.09% of the vote. They lost the popular vote at just one polling station out of 932 across Surakata.

In 2010, he was given the national Bung Hatta Anti-corruption Award and the following year the

Home Affairs Ministry named him the country’s best mayor.

Fuel subsidies

Indonesian motorists had enjoyed access to subsidised fuel ever since the country gained its independence in 1949.

But as the decades passed, demand rapidly outstripped domestic supply and the subsidies became a huge financial burden on the state,

accounting for up to 20% of fiscal expenditure by the 1960s.

Previous governments had attempted to remove the subsidies but the country was developing rapidly and the more time passed,

the more Indonesians became direct consumers of petrol and the more politically sensitive the issue became.

Jokowi had plans for massive infrastructure investment and extensive expansion of healthcare coverage and education support, and he badly needed to free up that cash

Just a month after his inauguration, the new president made his first move to increase the fixed price of consumer petrol and diesel. Then, in early January 2015, he moved to cut the subsidies further.

For a while, prices at the pump actually fell and Jokowi was able to free up around US$20 bn of government funding.

Later, when global oil prices began to rise once more, Jokowi intervened to fix prices at the pumps.

But the main cost of this intervention would now have to be borne by Pertamina.

"Ten New Balis" Program

At the start of his presidency, Jokwi had made tourism a key development priority as both a way to boost economic opportunities for communities far from the country’s conventional centers in line with the development from the peripheries element of his Nawacita framework

Accessibility and development of appropriate facilities were identified as key factors in opening up new areas

To have any chance of emulating Bali’s success in the new reigons earmarked for tourism, Jokowi’s administration recognised the need for sustained and well-integrated approaches.

In line with this, a number of SEZs were developed, each involving a mix of hard infrastructure such as improved airport and soft infrastructure such as looser regulations.?

12 locations were identified for the establishment of SEZs, all in peripheral areas away from established economic hubs.

For Jokowi, transport infrastructure development as in line with the priorities he outlined at the start of his presidency, drawing on Sukarno’s Trisakti conception of the ethos of Indonesian nationalism and elaborated in the Nawacita framework. It was particularly relevant to the goal of economic independence.

Better transport infrastructure leads to cheaper transportation, more efficient exchange of goods and services between regions, and domestic products that are better able to compete with their imported equivalents.

During his first term, a total of new airports were established. In Yogajakarta, where Jokowi had been based during his student days at UGM, a stalled replacement for the old and overcrowded Adisutjipto Airport was finally completed, ahead of the revised schedule.

Improving access to electricity

As recently as of 2012, Indonesia’s rate of electrification only reached 76.56% of the population.

While in urban areas 92% of people had access to electricity, in the countryside, only 59% had electricity at home, a worse even than in countries like Laos.

By the time Jokowi came to power, the nationwide electrification rate had reached 84.35%. but that still meant that over 15% of all Indonesians had no direct access to mains electricity.

He set a target of 99% rectification for the end of his first term.

The first element of Jokowi’s policy on electricity was firmly in line with his wide “pro-rakyat” credentials: a free electricity installation program for underprivileged families. The new program which was funded through a consortium of 35 SOE and one subsidiary got underway in 2018

To tackle the bigger problem of the inadequate network supply nationwide, in 2015, Jokowi launched the “35,000 megawatts of electricity for Indonesia” program, with a five year timeframe and an investment of RP110 trillion.

The aim of the program was to achieve a dramatic 35,000 MW increase in the country’s existing capacity of 55,000MW, which in itself took 70 years to develop.

The key problem under previous administration had arguably been a failure either to anticipate future development or to keep pace with current changes

New partner for his second term of presidency

Many observers had expected that Jokowi would choose former justice and human rights minister and Constitutional Court Judge Mahfud MD. And until the August 9 gathering there had never been any serious speculation around Ma’ruf Amin as a potential candidate.

Amin was leader of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and also chair of Indonesia’a main Islamic clerical body, the Majelis Ulama Indonesia, or MUI.

He was from NU’s more conservative side, and as MUI chair he had been central to the clerical condemnation of Ahok for blasphemy 2 years earlier. International media tended to refer to Amin as a “hard-line cleric”.

But it was a carefully considered choice, one that bolstered the closeness Jokowi had signalled to NU in recent years, and that went a long way to neutralise the anticipated attacks on the allegedly weak Muslim credentials of his campaign.

The move also reassured the leadership of the NU-linked PKB, one of Jokowi’s key party backers.

There was another factor at play in Jokowi’s choice. The role of the VP is not, of itself, particularly powerful, but it can be seen as a stepping stone to the presidency itself.

No one, however, thought that Amin had presidential ambitions. He was a cleric and academic first and foremost. He was also 75 years old.

In terms of active party politics, he was and unthreatening figure, and by choosing him Jokowi had actually further consolidated his coalition. There could be no grumbling about favouritism or worries that he already anointed a preferred successor.

Papua

Sukarno had made the handling over of Papua (As Irian is now known) an essential cause, representing the completion of an unfinished anti-colonial revolution.

Under heavy international pressure, in 1962, the Dutch finally handed the territory over to a UN Temporary Executive Authority, which then transferred it provisionally to Indonesia the following year on the grounds that an “act of free choice” would be conducted to confirm the inhabitants’ wishes.

Throughout this period, patriotic Indonesian parents named their children in honor of the country’s newest province.

One of these children, born in 1963, was Iriana, who would grow up to become Indonesia’s First Lady

Critical international commentaries on conflict in Papua often talk of “Indonesian colonialism”, but seldom acknowledge the actual roots of the historical centers of Java and Sumatra, coastal and offshore regions of Papua have been tied into archipelago trade networks for centuries.

Given that a commitment to Papua as an integral part of Indonesia is non-negotiable for any Indonesian government,

the authorities tend to find themselves in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” position in the eyes of international critics.

Should the place receive little attention or investment from the central government, as has been the case in the past, then the accusation will be of arrogant neglect. But if the Indonesian government puts money into Papua, develops its economy and its infrastructure, builds schools, markets, roads, then the claim will be colonialism.

For years the prices of commodities and goods for the people of Papua were extremely high compared to other parts of Indonesia.

This was largely due to inadequate transportation infrastructure. Distribution was hampered by poor or non-existent roads and a lack of scheduled transportation.

Indonesia's foreign policy

The objectives of foreign policy are generally classified into 3 tiers, main objective, intermediate objectives and long term goals.

In Indonesia’s case, this is all expressed in a very simple formula which has underpinned its for decades: bebas-aktif, “free and active”

The free and active doctrine emerges from this in turn as an approach which begins with the national interest. Firmly embedded in Indonesian foreign policy thinking for decades, it is rooted in the tradition of non-alignment pioneered by Sukarno in the 1950s.

At its most basic, the free and active approach sees the country typically avoiding formal military or security alliances

Free and active also has 2 essential emphasis.

First, it dictates that Indonesia’s foreign policy aims to maintain national identity. Secondly it aims to educate the nation, improve people’s welfare, and participate in maintaining world peace and order.

Although the latter aspiration can be seen as an external one, foreign policy is also intended to support the achievement of the first 2 ideals, which are more internal in nature: it is only through national prosperity that participation in the maintenance of world peace be carried out.

Apart from all of that, one area of FP in which Jokowi is particularly interested is economic diplomacy, which he has encouraged since the start of his time in office.

During 2016, 149 bilateral and multilateral economic agreements were agreed. That same year, 125 countries participated in the 2016 trade expo Indonesia which recorded transactions of US$974.76 mn and saw the signing of 31 trade contracts worth a further US$200mn. For Jokowi, all of this represented an entirely familiar process, that which he had first engaged in as a young entrepreneur.

But now it was an entire country rather than one small furniture company that was looking to sign contracts and strike international deals ?