Tag Archives: jakarta

As Jokowi looks to 2019 reelection, rivals deal a blow by taking Jakarta

After a tough campaign waged on religious and ethnic lines, Jakarta’s incoming governor Anies Baswedan (left) met with his defeated rival, outgoing governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (right) last week. (Facebook)

Whatever the Jakarta gubernatorial election portends for Indonesian president Joko Widodo’s reelection chances in 2019, it points perhaps to a nastier fight for the presidency and, more generally, in Indonesian politics in the future.

While official results still aren’t available, early counts made clear that Anies Baswedan, backed by both nationalist elites and a growing hardline Islamist movement, unseated Jokowi’s successor as Jakarta governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (known by his nickname, ‘Ahok’) by a far wider margin than expected. A Christian of Chinese descent. Ahok, who ran on Jokowi’s 2012 ticket, took over as governor when Jokowi won the Indonesian presidency in 2014.

Ahok was never quite as popular as Jokowi, and in Indonesian politics, where alliances can shift overnight, it’s too strong to suggest that Ahok’s defeat predicts trouble for Jokowi, who is looking to reelection in mid-2019. But the harsh tone of an election that took on racial and religious tones in a country that prides itself on tolerance and coexistence is an ominous sign.

Jakarta, home to over 10 million people, is one of the world’s 15 most-populous cities and, by far, the largest city in Indonesia. As governor, Ahok perhaps has an even more impressive record in three years than Jokowi had in two. With few ties to the longstanding ruling class, Ahok was an anti-corruption crusader whose brash actions to clean up Jakarta’s canals, reduce pollution and demolish some of the worst slums in the city rankled many of its residents, especially its poorer ones.

Far more damning to Ahok, however, was a concerted effort last year by radical Islamists to drag his name through the mud.

As the campaign wore on, however, it became clear that Ahok’s political rivals were happy to benefit from angst over his status a double minority and, especially, as a non-Muslim. At the end of last year, the hardline Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) organized a series of protests against Ahok that severely dented his popularity, especially among Muslims. The campaign introduced a new and far more divisive edge to Indonesian politics, which has not traditionally revolved primarily around race or religion. Ahok could still be imprisoned for up to five years on charges of violating blasphemy laws — what Ahok’s supporters believe a ridiculous and politically motivated charge. The outgoing governor is accused of insulting the Quran by quoting a Quranic verse last September in his reelection bid.

In an earlier round of voting on February 15, Ahok narrowly led Anies and Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, the son of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Jokowi’s predecessor as president, but failed to secure the majority support necessary to avoid a runoff.  Continue reading As Jokowi looks to 2019 reelection, rivals deal a blow by taking Jakarta

Indonesia post-mortem: why young, cosmopolitan voters chose Prabowo

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Last Thursday, the United States-Indonesia Society and the International Republican Institute held a briefing of data from R. R. William Liddle, a professor emeritus of political science at The Ohio State University and one of the leading US experts on Indonesian politics, government and culture. Indonesia Flag

Dr. Liddle brought with him a compelling set of exit polling data conducted by Saiful Mujani, a Jakarta-based research and consulting firm.

The data provided the strongest narrative details yet for how Jakarta governor Joko Wododo (‘Jokowi’) effectively outpaced former general Prabowo Subianto in what was Indonesia’s most fiercely and closely contested election since the introduction of direct voting for the presidency in 2004.

For example, it may be counterintuitive, but younger, urban voters appeared to prefer, by a slight margin, Prabowo to Jokowi. After all the talk of Jokowi as the younger candidate of hope and of reform, the ‘Barack Obama’ of Indonesia after his meteoric rise from Solo mayor to Jakarta governor to, now, president-elect, it isn’t necessarily intuitive that Jokowi edged his way to the Indonesian presidency on the support of relatively poorer, rural and older voters.

Voters by age

Voters under 21 years old supported Jokowi by a margin of just 53% to 47%, but voters over 55 supported Prabowo by a margin of 59% to 41%. Though you might expect younger voters to be most enthusiastic for a relatively young, modern president, they opted for Prabowo, nine years Jokowi’s senior.

One possibility is that younger voters don’t entirely remember Indonesia’s authoritarian age, but older voters remember only too well the human rights abuses of Suharto’s three-decade reign and, most especially, the economic pain of the financial crisis of 1997-99 that brought down Suharto’s ‘New Order.’ Given Prabowo’s ties to the regime — he was a top Suharto-era general and he used to be married to Suharto’s daughter — older voters might have been warier about supporting the former general, given his checkered past.

Rural and urban voters and voters by class

Rural voters preferred Jokowi by a margin of 56% to 44%, but Prabowo narrowly won urban voters by a margin of 51% to 49%. The data also showed that ‘white-collar’ voters supported Prabowo by 55% to 45%, while ‘blue-collar’ voters backed Jokowi by 54% to 46%.

Again, it’s a fascinating turn, considering Prabowo’s emphasis on economic nationalism that, in most countries, finds a greater audience among the least economically powerful. Wall Street bankers and investment attorneys in the United States, for example, are much less likely to support protectionist policies than, say, blue-collar ironworkers or manufacturers who acutely feel the sting of global competition.

As Liddle noted, there might be several reasons for Prabowo’s apparent strength among educated, successful, cosmopolitan Indonesians. One of them is the way that Jokowi framed himself as a ‘common man’ candidate — not a president who, like Prabowo, comes from the Indonesian elite, educated in international schools and has exquisite English-language skills. Prabowo, throughout the campaign, effectively demonstrated that his much greater exposure to the United States and the wider world, and many cosmopolitan voters found that quality reassuring.

Voters by religion

Islamic voters narrowly favored Prabowo by a margin of 51% to 49%, while non-Islamic voters overwhelmingly backed Jokowi by an 80% to 20% margin. That’s not surprising, given that three of the four major Islamist parties backed Prabowo and that his running mate, Hatta Rajasa, former coordinating minister for economics, is the leader of the Islamist Partai Amanat Nasional (PAN, National Mandate Party). It’s also not surprising in light of the whispering campaign that Jokowi is secretly Christian. The predominantly Hindu island of Bali, for example, has always been a stronghold for Jokowi’s party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P, Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan), and Jokowi did particularly well in predominantly Christian areas, such as Papua. It also explains why Prabowo won Indonesia’s most populous province, West Java, home to some of Indonesia’s most conservative Muslims — with 46.3 million people, West Java contains nearly 19% of the country’s population.

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The Javanese-Sundanese split

The data indicate that Jokowi triumphed among the Javanese by a margin of 56% to 44%, while Prabowo won the Sundanese by a margin of 80% to 20%. That explains why, despite Prabowo’s West Java breakthrough, with a heavy Sunda population, Jokowi narrowly won Jakarta (9.6 million) and East Java (37.5 million), and he racked up an even more solid victory in Yogyakarta (3.5 million) and Central Java (32.4 million), the traditional Javanese homeland. Among non-Javanese and non-Sundanese voters, Jokowi won by a margin of 53% to 47%. While Prabowo generally won more provinces in Sumatra, for example, Jokowi won the most populous province, North Sumatra (13 million), and Jokowi’s running mate Jusuf Kalla may have helped Jokowi win much of the island of Sulawesi.

The most interesting finding of the survey, though? Continue reading Indonesia post-mortem: why young, cosmopolitan voters chose Prabowo

It’s official: Jokowi wins Indonesian presidential election

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The two-week gap between the July 9 Indonesian election and today’s announcement of final results could have been a tense showdown between the two candidates, one a political neophyte, the other a stalwart of the Suharto-era military, who contested Indonesia’s closest-ever direct presidential election. Indonesia Flag

As it turns out, what could have been a constitutional crisis in Indonesia was an example of orderly democratic transition.

Joko Widodo (known as ‘Jokowi’), governor of Jakarta since late 2012, has won the Indonesian presidency with 53.15% of the vote. His rival, former general Prabowo Subianto, won just 46.85%. The gap of more than 6% is actually larger than many ‘quick counts’ reported in the vote’s aftermath.

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Prabowo (pictured above, left, meeting with Jokowi last week), who refused to concede defeat, despite signs of a narrow Jokowi win, worked with Jokowi and outgoing president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (known by his initials, ‘SBY’) to keep tensions relatively low, and Prabowo’s campaign staff over the weekend all but conceded the Indonesian presidency to Jokowi. Prabowo’s team, which had indicated it might file a lawsuit to contest alleged fraud, has now said it won’t file a case in Indonesia’s constitutional court.

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RELATED: What Jokowi’s apparent victory in Indonesia means

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That’s worth a sigh of relief, given the nationalist themes that Prabowo struck in his presidential campaign. At one point, the former Suharto son-in-law, whose human rights record in the Indonesian special forces came under significant scrutiny during the election, argued that democracy wasn’t right for Indonesia and that he might return to the country’s more authoritarian 1945 constitution.

Jokowi’s victory, above all, cements the foundations of Indonesian democracy.

So what happens next?

Jokowi will be inaugurated no later than October 20. In the meanwhile, expect a significant amount of churn within Indonesia’s politics. Continue reading It’s official: Jokowi wins Indonesian presidential election

What Jokowi’s apparent victory in Indonesia means

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His Javanese fans call him the ‘Barack Obama of Indonesia.’Indonesia Flag

At age 53, the reformist Jakarta governor, Joko Widodo – or ‘Jokowi’ (pictured above)– is very likely to become Indonesia’s next president, with reliable ‘quick counts’ giving him a margin of around 52% to 48% for his rival, former Suharto-era general Prabowo Subianto in the country’s fiercely contested presidential election.

Though the final vote won’t be announced until July 22, leaving Indonesia in a two-week state of semi-uncertainty, the ‘quick count’ results from a half-dozen reputable institutions are generally consistent, they were reliable indicators of the final vote results in Indonesia’s April legislative elections, and they have been reliable indicators in past national elections. Oxford University’s Kevin Fogg, an expert on Indonesia, writes that Jokowi’s ‘quick count’ margin places him safely beyond the realm of ‘dirty tricks, challenges, or underhanded moves,’ despite Prabowo’s alternative declaration of victory, on the basis of less reputable counts from Prabowo-friendly media.

Indonesia, with nearly 247 million citizens, is the world’s fourth-most populous country, the world’s third-largest democracy, Asia’s fifth-largest economy, and it’s an important strategic and trading partner for China, the United States and Australia.

Jokowi’s apparent victory will be welcomed in Washington, Brussels and Canberra because it gives Indonesia a modern leader whose principles are firmly rooted in Indonesian democracy, not Suharto-era authoritarianism. It will also be welcomed among investors in New York, London, Shanghai and Jakarta, who feared that his rival Prabowo’s protectionist and nationalist rhetoric could endanger foreign capital, Indonesia’s rule of law and the steady political, legal and economic gains of the past decade under outgoing president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

A victory for Indonesia’s democratic institutions

Prabowo, Suharto’s former son-in-law, spent parts of the campaign disparaging the idea of ‘one person, one vote,’ and called into question whether ‘Western-style’ democracy was an incredibly good fit with Indonesian values. He waxed about restoring Indonesia’s 1945 constitution, which would have rolled back direct presidential elections and would more easily allow the president to suspend Indonesia’s legislature on the basis of ‘emergency rule.’ Investigative journalist Allan Nairn, who covered the East Timorese struggle against Indonesian rule, published excerpts from a 2001 interview with Prabowo in which the former general argued that Indonesia wasn’t ready for democracy because it still had ‘cannibals’ and ‘violent mobs.’ Though Prabowo ultimately tried to assure voters of his respect for the democratic process in the 2014 campaign, and though he was Megawati’s running mate in her failed 2009 presidential campaign, Prabowo consistently deployed rhetoric reminiscent of Indonesia’s first two authoritarian leaders, the communist Sukarno and the anti-communist Suharto. Continue reading What Jokowi’s apparent victory in Indonesia means

Indonesia’s Prabowo all but declares he’ll become ‘Suharto 2.0’ if elected

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Almost overnight, Indonesia’s July 9 presidential election has transformed into a contest over the very future of democracy in the world’s fourth-most populous country.Indonesia Flag

Prabowo Subianto, the nationalist leader of Gerindra (Partai Gerakan Indonesia Raya, the Great Indonesia Movement Party), has narrowed what, just last month, was a double-digit deficit to become Indonesia’s next president. Polls suggest that the lead Jakarta governor Joko Widodo (‘Jokowi’) once enjoyed has narrowed or dissipated altogether.

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RELATED: Will Prabowo Subianto become Indonesia’s next president?

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But as Prabowo’s campaign has gained so much momentum over the past month, he’s becoming even more explicit about his views on democracy — and those views aren’t incredibly positive, according to remarks Prabowo (pictured above) made over the weekend:

[Prabowo said] elites presume that Western ideas such as one man, one vote and direct elections for provincial and national leaders are the best on offer. “Even though they’re not appropriate for us. Like direct elections — we’ve already gone down that path. But it’s like someone addicted to smoking; if we ask them to stop, the process will be difficult,” Prabowo said.

“I believe much of our current political and economic systems go against our nation’s fundamental philosophy, laws and traditions, and against the 1945 Constitution,” he said. “Many of these ideas that we have applied are disadvantageous to us, they do not suit our culture,” Prabowo said.

The 1945 constitution, it’s worth noting, is the founding document that allowed the rise of Sukarno, Indonesia’s first post-independence leader (who conveniently dismissed the country’s parliament and often invoked ‘temporary’ emergency rule), and the rise of Suharto, the strongman who reoriented Indonesia away from Soviet influence and toward a slightly more liberal path between the 1960s and his overthrow in 1998. It allows for the president to declare emergency rule, thereby suspending typical constitutions protections, provides for an indirectly president by the Indonesian legislature, and it precedes the constitutional amendments of the post-1998 regime that have greatly decentralized power from Jakarta to Indonesia’s provinces.

Though Prabowo hasn’t expressly said that he’d like to end direct elections in Indonesia, he’s made enough statements dismissing democracy and other ‘Western ideas’ that it’s worthy of concern.  Continue reading Indonesia’s Prabowo all but declares he’ll become ‘Suharto 2.0’ if elected

Ruling Democrats in Indonesia endorse Prabowo

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In a stunning surprise that highlights the shifting momentum in  Indonesia’s presidential election, the ruling party of outgoing president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (‘SBY’) has endorsed the presidential campaign of former general Prabowo Subianto.Indonesia Flag

Though many members of the Partai Demokrat (PD, Democratic Party) were already sympathetic to Prabowo’s campaign, its leaders indicated that the party would take a wait-and-see approach to the election earlier in the spring, when polls showed that Jakarta governor Joko Widodo (‘Jokowi’) would win the presidency by a wide margin.

Over the past month, the race has tightened as Prabowo (pictured above, left, with SBY, right) has waged a spirited campaign, high on economic nationalism and populism, and relentless in his attacks on Jokowi’s relative inexperience.

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RELATED: Will Prabowo Subianto become Indonesia’s next president? 

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The PD’s embrace is not so incredibly important from an organizational standpoint because the Democrats, founded by SBY in 2004, are still a relatively new force in Indonesian politics, and there’s no guarantee the party will even survive SBY’s retirement. Accordingly, the Democrats lacks the local grassroots structure of Jokowki’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P, Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan), which dates to the socialist government of Sukarno in the 1950s and Golkar (Partai Golongan Karya, Party of the Functional Groups), which dates to Suharto’s ‘New Order’ regime that spanned from 1967 to 1998. Continue reading Ruling Democrats in Indonesia endorse Prabowo

Will Prabowo Subianto become Indonesia’s next president?

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Joko Widodo has the opposite problem of US president Barack Obama, whose more unhinged opponents claim that Obama, who spent four years of his childhood in Indonesia, is secretly a Muslim.Indonesia Flag

In Indonesia’s presidential race, it’s the young Jakarta governor who has to assure voters he’s a Muslim and not, as the dirty-trick accusations suggest, a secret Christian.

With the campaign to elect Indonesia’s next president in full gear, everyone assumed that the political phenomenon that is Widodo (know universally in Indonesia as ‘Jokowi’) would easily win on July 9.

Though the race was invariably set to tighten, it’s now a toss-up — and Prabowo Subianto (pictured above), a Suharto-era ‘military strongman,’ may yet manage to steal an election that’s long been considered Jokowi’s to lose.

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RELATED: In Indonesia, it’s Jokowi-Kalla against Prabowo-Hatta

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Jokowi’s meteoric rise began with his surprise election as Jakarta’s governor in September 2012. Since then, he’s accomplished an astonishing amount of policy reforms, including the implementation of a universal health care program for Jakarta.

Going into the April parliamentary elections, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P, Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan) named Jokowi as its presidential candidate, ending months of speculation with an announcement designed to maximize  excitement over Jokowi’s presumed candidacy — and also foreclosing the possibility that former president Megawati Sukarnoputri would make a third consecutive run.

Though the PDI-P won the April elections, it didn’t do nearly as well as polls indicated, garnering just 18.95% of the vote, narrowly leading Golkar (Partai Golongan Karya, Party of the Functional Groups), the vaguely liberal party founded by Indonesia’s late 20th century strongman, Suharto. Golkar continues play a strong role in Indonesian politics today, most recently as the junior partner in the government led by Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (‘SBY’) since 2004.

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RELATED: ‘Jokowi’ effect falls flat for PDI-P in Indonesia election results

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Yudhoyono is term-limited after winning the 2004 and 2009 presidential elections in landslide victories, though he’ll leave office with somewhat mixed ratings. His own party, the Partai Demokrat (Democratic Party) won just 10.2% in the April legislative elections, falling to fourth place overall. 

Golkar, in turn, only narrowly outpaced Prabowo’s party, the nationalist Gerindra (Partai Gerakan Indonesia Raya, the Great Indonesia Movement Party), which he formed in 2008 when he left Golkar, hoping to use a new party vehicle to power his own 2009 presidential run.

For much of 2013, earlier this year, and even after the parliamentary elections, Jokowi led every poll survey in advance of the July 9 election. But Prabowo, age 62, has hammered against Jokowi, age 53, for his relative inexperience, chipping away at what’s perhaps Jokowi’s chief strength — his novelty, reformist instincts, and the lack of any trace of corruption.

Prabowo is neither novel nor reformist nor corruption-free.

He’s a battle-toughened veteran of Indonesian politics, who has shifted from one alliance to another over the past decade.

Some critics argue that he’s essentially ‘Suharto 2.0’ — or worse.

Most publicly available polls from May and early June still show Jokowi with a lead, sometimes even with a double-digit lead. But there’s a sense that, as the parties engaged in post-April elections over alliances and running mates, and as Prabowo and Jokowi have engaged on the campaign trail and in three of five scheduled presidential debates, the race is tightening — and the momentum is with Prabowo. Dirty tricks, including rumors that Jokowi is Christian and that Jokowi is Chinese, have marked the campaign in its final weeks.

it’s hard to know exactly where the candidates stand because polling is still unreliable in Indonesia and, moreover, there’s been a lack of recent polls from more reliable pollsters. But a poll taken between June 1 and 10 by the DC-based International Foundation for Electoral Systems and the Indonesian Survey Institute found 42% of Indonesian voters support Jokowi and 39% support Prabowo, with 19% undecided. Other pollsters are rumored to have withheld polling that shows Jokowi’s lead sharply narrowing or, in some cases, a Prabowo lead.

In opposition since leaving Golkar six years ago, Prabowo has powered Gerindra into a force in Indonesia with a platform of populist rhetoric high on economic nationalism in a country with particular anxiety about global markets since the 1997-98 Asian currency crisis that caused a 13% contraction in the Indonesian economy in 1998, precipitating Suharto’s downfall after three decades in power.

So who is Prabowo? And how would he govern Indonesia differently than Jokowi?   Continue reading Will Prabowo Subianto become Indonesia’s next president?

‘Jokowi’ effect falls flat for PDI-P in Indonesia election results

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Despite polls that showed Indonesia’s opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P, Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan) would win what amounts to a landslide victory in Indonesia’s parliamentary elections today on the strength of its president candidate Joko Widodo (‘Jokowi’), it won something more like a conventional victory, disappointing fans — and demonstrating that Jokowi’s win in the July 9 presidential election, though likely, isn’t certain.Indonesia Flag

Final election results and allocations of seats in the Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR, People’s Representative Council) won’t be available until May. But quick counts conducted by several media and other groups show that, despite predictions, the PDI-P may not have even reached the 20% hurdle in the national vote that would allow it to nominate Jokowi for president without another party as its ally.

Here’s the count from Indonesia’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies:

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In brief, here’s a look at the winners and losers: Continue reading ‘Jokowi’ effect falls flat for PDI-P in Indonesia election results

Spring 2014 voting blitz: five days, six elections

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We’re beginning to hit the peak of what’s perhaps the busiest world election season of the past few years.

What began as a slow year with boycotted votes in Bangladesh and Thailand in the first two months of 2014 snowballed into a busier March, with important parliamentary elections in Colombia, the final presidential vote in El Salvador, parliamentary elections in Serbia, a key presidential election in Slovakia, and municipal elections that upended national politics in France, The Netherlands and Turkey.

But the pace only gets more frenetic from here.

Between today and Wednesday, five countries (and one very important province) on three continents will go to to the polls: Continue reading Spring 2014 voting blitz: five days, six elections

Who is Joko Widodo?

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Given that Indonesia is the world’s fourth-most populous country, the 15th largest world economy (and likely to grow), the second-most populous democracy and the most populous Muslim democracy, its elections this spring and summer are nearly as important as those in the European Union and in India.Indonesia Flag

Democracy came to Indonesia only gradually. After the fall of Indonesia’s president Suharto in 1998, the country held its first democratic parliamentary elections in 1999 and its first direct presidential election in 2004.

In 2004, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono became Indonesia’s first directly elected president. When he steps down later this year, he’ll leave behind a country firmly on a democratic track and with one of the world’s strongest emerging economies. Indonesia’s GDP skyrocketed during his administration from $256.8 billion in 2004 to $878 billion in 2012 — and growing. Between 2004 and 2012, Indonesia had an average GDP growth rate of 5.78%.

That doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for improvement on any mix of economic, social or political measures. Indonesia’s next president will face several challenges. Its infrastructure — roads, train networks and ports — falls far behind that of China or even India. It has a growing urban population that suffers from flooding, pollution, clogged traffic, poor housing conditions and inferior health care and education services. Indonesia’s next president must also design an  economic policy that will bring productive growth to Indonesia without chasing away foreign investment. With the East Timor and Aceh questions settled, Indonesia’s next president won’t face any pressing existential issues of national identity, notwithstanding ongoing pressure from Islamists.

But after a decade of ‘normal’ politics, July’s election will be more conventional than historical.

For over a year, the frontrunner in the presidential race has been the governor of Jakarta state, Joko Widodo (known simply as ‘Jokowi’ to most Indonesians). The new star of Indonesian politics, Jokowi (pictured above) has been compared to US president Barack Obama for his meteoric rise, though he only entered the presidential race last week. He rose to national prominence only after winning the September 2012 Jakarta gubernatorial election, ousting the one-term incumbent, Fauzi Bowo, of Yudhoyono’s governing Partai Demokrat (Democratic Party).

In the past two elections, his party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P, Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan) nominated Megawati Sukarnoputri as its presidential candidate. The daughter of Sukarno, Indonesia’s first post-independence leader who governed Indonesia between 1947 and 1964, Megawati served as president between 2001 and 2004. Megawati’s apparent decision to pass the leadership baton to Jokowi is a sign that, at age 67, Megawati has begrudgingly determined that a presidential comeback isn’t likely.

Jokowi comes from a younger generation that came of age not under Sukarno, but under Suharto, a more authoritarian figure who pulled the country away from socialism and towards economic liberalism, as well as away from the Soviet Union and China and toward the United States.

Jokowi made the leap from business — he once sold furniture — to politics only within the past decade. As mayor of Surakarta (Solo) between 2005 and 2012, and as governor of Jakarta today, Jokowi has become known for a hands-on political style, which involves the tradition of blusukan — impromptu visits throughout his city to check in with everyday Indonesians, a touch that allows Jokowi to connect with Indonesian voters better than other members of the political elite, including Yudhoyono. That approach has made Jokowi incredibly popular, and it has given him the kind of profile that Cory Booker recently enjoyed as mayor of Newark, New Jersey — a responsive super-official ready to deal with emergencies from flooding to traffic at a moment’s notice, though those problems remain endemic to Indonesia’s chaotic capital. As Jakarta’s governor, he’s increased spending on education programs, and he’s raised the minimum wage twice (first by 44% and by 9% in 2013).

Perhaps the most comprehensive policy that Jokowi has implemented in Jakarta is a universal heath care program quickly introduced upon taking office in 2012. Like the health care reforms introduced by Obama, Jokowi was criticized for the program’s rollout and implementation, which included a surge in demand for medical services.

But that doesn’t necessarily explain what he would do as Indonesia’s next president. Continue reading Who is Joko Widodo?