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Indonesia, Jakarta

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

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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 →

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Bali Nine executions highlight Jokowi’s weakness

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Despite widespread international opprobrium, Indonesia executed eight prisoners earlier today, including two members of the ‘Bali Nine’ group of Australians convicted for drug offenses, four Nigerian nationals and a Brazilian national. Indonesia Flag

Indonesian president Joko Widodo, known as ‘Jokowi’ throughout the country, was elected on a platform of reform and good government. With today’s executions, and with the executions of Brazilian and Dutch nationals for similar drug offenses earlier this year, Jokowi’s international reputation lies in tatters, just six months into his administration. Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipino woman convicted of similar drug offenses, however, won a last-minute reprieve after conversations between Jokowi and Philippine president Benigno Aquino III. Veloso was allegedly duped into smuggling drugs into Indonesia, and Aquino had argued that she should be granted a stay of execution for the purposes of testifying against the traffickers who sent Veloso to Indonesia with drugs.

It’s a stupendous fall for Jokowi, who swept into office with high hopes domestically and abroad. Though the executions are not especially controversial in Indonesia, where the death penalty for drug-related offenses is popular, its beleaguered president is facing other pressures that have made it virtually impossible for him to grant clemency to the ‘Bali Nine’ and other foreign drug convicts without incurring additional political backlash, most of all from within the party that sponsored his presidential candidacy, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P, Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan). Until the executions earlier this year, Indonesia had been under a sort of unofficial moratorium for the prior four years.

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RELATED: It’s official — Jokowi wins Indonesian presidential election

RELATED: Death penalty diplomacy presents challenge to Jokowi

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Notwithstanding the executions, when viewed in tandem with other missteps, Jokowi risks being viewed as a coward at home and a murderer abroad. For now, Jokowi’s decision, at least domestically, is a nationalist moment reaffirming the sovereignty of the world’s fourth-most populous country, but it comes at the risk of painting Indonesia as the number-one target of anti-death penalty activists worldwide.

Though Brazil and The Netherlands recalled their ambassadors from Jakarta after the January executions, the latest round of executions could bring far more destabilizing consequences for Jokowi. Australian prime minister Tony Abbott and foreign minister Julie Bishop have objected strenuously to the Indonesian government’s decision to carry out the executions.

Though ties between Australia and Indonesia are not perfect, the bilaterial relationship is seen by both countries as vital to security and trade interests. Indonesia is the largest recipient of Australian foreign aid, with Australia contributing nearly $650 million in aid to Indonesia in 2013. Cooperation, however, is an important issue with respect to the smuggling of migrants into Indonesia by boat, which peaked (along with deaths at sea) in the mid-2000s.

When Jokowi came to office, he quickly moved to reduce fuel subsidies that had hogged up nearly one-quarter of the Indonesian national budget. By January, his administration had eliminated them entirely, and the world watched with high regard for a president who seemed willing and, even more surprisingly, able to take bold steps that could liberalize Indonesia’s economy. Record-low oil prices, moreover, made early 2015 a perfect time to eliminate those subsidies.

Since then, however, Jokowi’s record has been much less impressive.

Instead of taking on widespread corruption, Jokowi instead seems to have weakened it. His initial appointment of Budi Gunawan to the Anti-Corruption Commission (KPK) was put on hold when it became clear that the KPK was investigating Gunawan for corruption. Though the entity is just a decade old, the KPK has earned considerable respect for impartiality and success. Gunawan’s appointment appeared to make a mockery of the KPK’s work, and it called into severe question Jokowi’s commitment to anti-corruption efforts. Jokowi quietly dropped the nomination, but nevertheless appointed Gunawan as the deputy national police chief earlier this month.

After signing an executive order establishing a broad increase in car allowances for government officials, Jokowi feebly responded to criticism that he hadn’t had time to read every regulation that crosses his desk. He’s now reconsidering that as well.

Most emasculating of all, Jokowi sat at the PDI-P party congress last month while its leader, former president Megawati Sukarnoputri (pictured above), the daughter of Indonesia’s founding president, Sukarno, essentially scolded Jokowi for not lining up behind Megawati:

“It goes without saying that the President and Vice President must toe the party line, because the party policies are consistent with what the public wants,” she claimed. Her voice rising, Megawati warned Jokowi against breaking his campaign promises. “I have said this again and again, please stick to the Constitution. Fulfill your campaign promises because they are your sacred bond with the people,” Megawati said, to the thunderous applause of party members attending the national congress at the Inna Grand Bali Beach Hotel.

Megawati has mocked Jokowi for not expediting the executions of the ‘Bali Nine,’ and she has somewhat controversially linked drug offenses with the rise of HIV/AIDS in Indonesia. As vice president, Megawati became president in 2001 when Abdurrahman Wahid was removed from office. She failed in both 2004 and 2009 to win election in her own right, losing both times to popular former army general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who left office to middling reviews last October. Jokowi’s push to reinstate Indonesian executions contradicts the conventional wisdom that Yudhoyono (who is known by his initials, ‘SBY’) cared too much about international opinion.

In the meanwhile, Jokowi has raised eyebrows by reaching out to his former rival in last year’s presidential election, Prabowo Subianto, who leads a nationalist party, Gerindra (Partai Gerakan Indonesia Raya, the Great Indonesia Movement Party) that, along with the more market-friendly Golkar (Partai Golongan Karya, Party of the Functional Groups); and SBY’s own Partai Demokrat (Democratic Party) controls the Indonesian legislature.

If Jokowi were to abandon the PDI-P and Megawati’s iron fist, and turn to the Golkar-Gerindra-Demokrat alliance instead, he could conceivably effect more control over Indonesia’s government. Though such a sudden switch would be unprecedented in the history of the country’s brief democratic era, it reflects the fluid nature of Indonesian presidential coalitions. Moreover, Jokowi’s vice president, Jusuf Kalla, is a former Golkar leader who also served as SBY’s first vice president in the 2000s.

Nothing, at this point, will bring back any of the executed victims of Indonesia’s death penalty. Jokowi, whose term runs through 2019, will eventually have to make amends with Australia and the international community. For now, though, his global legacy begins with the stain of reintroducing the death penalty to his country, even as capital punishment is quickly being eradicated throughout much of the developed and developing world alike.

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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? →

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

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It’s official — with Monday’s announcement that Indonesian presidential frontrunner Joko Widodo (‘Jokowi’) has chosen former vice president and former Golkar party chair Jusuf Kalla as his running mate, the chief presidential tickets and their alliances for the July 9 election are now largely settled.Indonesia Flag

The Jokowi-Kalla ticket pairs the young Jakarta governor, age 52, with a longtime steady hand who, at age 71, is nearly two decades older than Jokowi, the standard-bearer of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P, Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan), which emerged as the strongest in Indonesia’s parliamentary elections in April shortly after naming Jokowi as its presidential candidate. Its leader, Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of Indonesia’s first post-independence president, and a former president between 2001 and 2004, remains a powerful figure behind the scenes.

Kalla (pictured above, left, with Jokowi) previously served as vice president between 2004 and 2009 under outgoing president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (known in Indonesia as ‘SBY’). The two often clashed, and Kalla often appeared the more substantial figure, given his party’s much larger bloc of seats at the time in the Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR, People’s Representative Council), the lower house of the Indonesian parliament. Though Kalla will undoubtedly boost Jokowi’s chances of winning in July, there’s a risk that he could come to be seen as the puppet-master of a future Jokowi-led administration. 

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Despite last-minute speculation that Kalla’s party, Golkar (Partai Golongan Karya, Party of the Functional Groups), would support Jokowi, Kalla seems to have split from his party to join Jokowi’s ticket. Golkar will instead back the presidential candidacy of Prabowo Subianto, the leader of Gerindra (Partai Gerakan Indonesia Raya, the Great Indonesia Movement Party), itself a spinoff from Golkar in 2008.

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What’s remarkable is that Golkar’s leader, former presidential candidate Aburizal Bakrie, ultimately supported Prabowo without winning the vice presidential slot for himself.

Instead, Prabowo last week chose Hatta Rajasa, the chair of the Partai Amanat Nasional (PAN, National Mandate Party), a moderate Islamist party. Hatta (pictured above, right, with Prabowo) has served since 2009 as coordinating minister for economics in the current administration; he previously served from 2007 to 2009 as state secretary and from 2004 to 2007 as transportation minister. He’s been the chairman of the PAN since 2010 — and he has deeper ties to Yudhoyono, given that his daughter is married to Edhie Baskoro, the president’s youngest son.

What does Kalla bring to the ticket? Aside from experience, he’ll bring the gravitas of someone who can balance Megawati’s influence in a Jokowi administration. He’ll bring a great deal of support to the ticket from his native Sulawesi and from his wider base in eastern Indonesia. Even if Prabowo has Golkar’s formal support as a party, many of its voters will follow Kalla’s lead and vote for Jokowi.

Kalla, too, is Muslim, and he’s a member of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), a longtime Sunni Islamic civil society group, so the Jokowi-Kalla ticket will win at least some Muslim votes. Though three Islamist parties have backed Prabowo, the one that won the most votes in the April legislative elections, the Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa (PKB, National Awakening Party), is backing Jokowi. 

So now that Indonesia’s version of ‘veepstakes’ is over, where does that leave the two presidential campaigns? Continue reading In Indonesia, it’s Jokowi-Kalla against Prabowo-Hatta →

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Veepstakes, Indonesia-style: Will Kalla return as vice president?

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More than a month after Indonesia’s parliamentary elections, and with just less than two months until its presidential election, all eyes are on Jakarta governor Joko Widodo (most Indonesians refer to him simply as ‘Jokowi’), the frontrunner to become Indonesia’s next president. In particular, many Indonesians are watching to see who  he will choose as his running mate in the July 9 vote. Indonesia Flag

Under Indonesia’s somewhat arcane system, a party (or a coalition of parties) must win either 25% of the national vote in the April parliamentary elections or hold 20% of the seats in the Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR, People’s Representative Council) in order to nominate a presidential candidate.

No single party — not even Jokowi’s — managed to surpass that hurdle. That’s led to a series of behind-the-scenes negotiations among Indonesia’s major parties to sort alliances for the July election. It makes for a uniquely Indonesian version of ‘veepstakes,’ a term normally applied to the drawn-out process whereby US presidential nominees painstakingly select a running mate. Just as in the United States, the Indonesian media is watching Jokowi’s every move this week to divine clues as to his choice.

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RELATED: ‘Jokowi effect’ falls flat for PDI-P in Indonesia
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Among the more tantalizing names being floated is Jusuf Kalla (pictured above), who served as vice president in the first term of the outgoing incumbent, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and who currently serves as president of the Indonesian Red Cross Society.

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Final results from the election were announced late last week, and the presidential candidates have until May 18 to name their running mates, a decision that usually bridges two or more parties in alliance for the presidential elections. Jokowi is set to announce his own running mate on Friday. Continue reading Veepstakes, Indonesia-style: Will Kalla return as vice president? →