The Sorcerer’s
Apprentice Doomed
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| Jokowi among mates in Malang, But the scene will be different in Jakarta. |
On 9 July an estimated 187 million Indonesians will have the
chance to directly elect their next president.
Current front runner is former Jakarta governor Joko Widodo (Jokowi),
pursued by military man Prabowo Subianto. Jokowi has Jusuf Kalla, a former vice
president (2004-2009) as running mate in a pairing billed as youth and
experience. But as Duncan Graham in
East Java argues, this could be a dysfunctional partnership.
…………………….
Drum roll and trumpet blast.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please be upstanding for the next President of
the Republic of Indonesia, Haji Doktor Muhammad Jusuf Kalla, exemplary
businessman, outstanding political leader and internationally renowned
peace-maker, the man who will take this great nation forward to its natural
destiny.
“Some of you may have heard he’s the Vice Presidential
candidate; technically that’s right. But we all know who’ll be the Big Man
around here.” (Applause and laughter.)
Indonesians defer to seniors. Kalla is 72, an age where
ambitions have flatlined and a man no longer cares what others think. Should he still be standing when his term
ends in 2019 (life expectancy for Indonesian men is 68) he’ll be more concerned
at juggling his great grand children than jostling for sinecures in academia or
the UN.
After a career just a heartbeat from the top, the moment has
come to stop being an also-ran. For the past five years he’s sat as chairman of
the Red Cross in its Jakarta office.
From there he’s watched his former boss Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono (SBY), the man who dumped him in the 2009 election campaign because
he was too threatening, let the people’s mandate slip from his grasp and become
President Bland.
This is Kalla’s final chance to make his mark, to achieve
greatness, to be remembered as a Sulawesi hero who trounced the Javanese. He’s
got nothing to lose.
Who’s going to roadblock?
Jokowi, a furniture businessman from a provincial town, briefly the
Governor of Jakarta? He’s a candidate with no qualifications for national
leadership other than being what the others are not – an unpretentious man of
the people who seems to want a better Indonesia, not personal power and
limitless wealth.
Wearing a plain shirt, walking to work and eating bakso (meatball soup) on the sidewalk is
great media but it’s not statesman stuff. Indonesians expect leaders to strut.
If Jokowi has a philosophy it’s that we should all be nice
to one another. Another mild guy preached
that 2,000 years ago and look what happened to him.
In the chilling
documentary The Act of Killing about the
1965 massacre of communists, Kalla promotes violence at a rally of paramilitary
thugs called Pancasila Youth: (Pancasila
– five principles – is the State ideology).
“The spirit of Pancasila Youth, that some people
accuse of being gangsters. Gangsters are people who work outside of the system,
not for the government. The word gangster (‘preman’ in Bahasa Indonesia) comes
from ‘free men’. This nation needs ‘free men’.
“If everyone worked for the government we’d be a
nation of bureaucrats. We’d get nothing done. We need gangsters to get things
done. Free, private men, who get things done. We need gangsters, who are
willing to take risks in business. Use your muscles! Muscles aren’t for beating
up people. Although
beating people up is sometimes needed.”
Yet at another time and place he was deservedly
applauded for cutting peace deals after prolonged fighting in Aceh and
the Moluccas, resolutions that had escaped SBY and his predecessors. There was
talk of a Nobel nomination.
Kalla is equally at ease in the departments, the mandarins
are his mates. He knows where the skeletons lie, and the living know he knows.
Jokowi may be the little people’s hope for change, but he’s an
outsider in Jakarta’s intertwined incestuous, elite and corrupt political
establishment.
He has no organised personal powerbase. He doesn’t have a
daughter married to a minister or a son who runs a pesantren (Islamic boarding school). His wife has no brothers who
are generals or sisters married to megatycoons.
He’s never communed with
Javanese spirits in a mountain cave or featured in a mystic’s prediction. Neither
has he ever ordered a battalion to load live ammunition or shaken world leaders’
hands.
Kalla once drove Golkar, former president Soeharto’s
political vehicle now rebadged as a democratic people mover. He’s old enough to
be 52-year old Jokowi’s Dad and even claims to have persuaded the former Solo (Central
Java) mayor to move to the Big Durian and stand as Governor.
When Kalla was manipulating the nation with Soeharto the
lanky forester was in Yogyakarta studying
timber.
Kalla won’t need to remind his protégé about the
differences; why state the obvious? He’ll let the youngster make speeches and
look important when visitors come. He’ll
show him around the traps if he has time, introduce him to a few mates from the
old days, point out the toilets, correct his English – that sort of thing.
Unless Jokowi can assert himself from the moment the Koran
is raised above his head as he takes the presidential oath, his term is doomed.
He’ll be cipherman, not superman, Indonesia’s Jimmy Carter – nice guy, no
mongrel.
Kalla won’t be his only problem. A popular cartoon doing the smartphone rounds
shows a baby Jokowi nursed by mother Megawati Soekarnoputri (daughter of
Soekarno) a former inept President and the she-who-must-be-obeyed head of the misnamed
Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) that nominated Jokowi.
She’s in the game to keep her founding president Dad’s name
alive when this generation, with 67 million first-time voters, has already moved
on. Daughter Puan Maharani wanted to be Jokowi’s running mate till someone
chanced upon a remnant grain of reality. The party continues to be riven by sinetron (soap opera) plotlines, not magisterial
policies to inspire great deeds.
Then there’s Indonesia’s Macbeth bewitched for greatness –
even named after a revolutionary martyr hero and son of a famous economist. At 62 former general Prabowo Subianto, once
Soeharto’s son-in-law, still bristles with military authority. Self doubt is
not his suit. If he hadn’t been so ruthless and arrogant when in uniform and
been discharged from the Army he’d be checking the presidential garage right
now to see if its big enough to take both his Mercedes and helicopter.
Jokowi doesn’t need to worry – his bike will fit anywhere.
Prabowo has already mustered a coalition that will control
more than 50 per cent of the Parliament, ready to wage political guerrilla war on
the former Jakarta governor’s shortcomings, as Tony Abbott did on Julia Gillard. If Jokowi doesn’t fight back furiously he
could get impeached, like fourth president and equally decent man Gus Dur, and retire
hurt.
In this bleak scenario the stability of our nearest
neighbour, the region’s biggest economy and the world’s most populous Islamic
nation could be under serious threat.
(First published in On Line Opinion, 23 May 2014http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=16335 )
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