GOODISH GUY IN BAD COMPANY
Gibran Rakabuming Raka is smarter than his stolid Dad Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo, President of our huge neighbour since 2014. As Vice President Gibran could be a positive change agent - but that demands missionary zeal and the guts to challenge his dangerous leader . Does he have The Right Stuff?
In the lead-up to the 14 February national poll, a TV debate between Gibran and his older and more accomplished rivals showed the 36-year-old Mayor of Solo in Central Java is no daddy's shadow - as shown in the street posters - but an individual, a VP candidate in his own right.
However, he's burdened by the company he keeps and the dirty dealings done to give him a shot at the big game. These issues distress the educated middle classes concerned with the erosion of democracy under Jokowi's reign; sadly most voters won't care a dish of cold rice because nepotism and corruption are accepted as the Indonesian way even though it repels the ethical international investors the economy needs.
That won't change till any new president becomes an Indonesian version of the late Singapore PM Lee Kuan Yew (1959 - 1990) tough enough to burn bridges, stare down the threatening oligarchs and jail mates. Chances of this happening are about the same as Trump turning to empathy.
After his everyman Dad beat elite opposition to head the world’s third largest democracy his team sought photo-ops with loving family. Gibran was a reluctant drag-in from his catering business. He looked surly, a young man with better things to do than play in a political pantomime.
Hot cakes must have done well because a few years later he revealed AUD 2.2 million in assets. When Papa showed that politics pays better than kitchen toil Gibran warmed to the addiction of power.
Fo the sympathy vote Jokowi plays on his poor riverbank home history like Anthony Albanese uses his single-mum, council flat background. But unlike the PM’s story, the President’s oft-told tale sustains popularity ratings of around 80 per cent.
So the tacticians got young Gibran to tag along with one of the old boys hoping Dad's lustre would rub off and add youth to the real candidate.
That should have been Ganjar Pranowo, the choice of the nationalist Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). It’s Jokowi’s party and endorsed him twice but as he constitutionally can’t stand again chose the Governor of Central Java as his replacement.
Gibran is also a member of PDI-P but its axe-grinding matriarch Megawati Soekarnoputri (right) put hatred of Jokowi ahead of political sense and dubbed Mohammad Mahfud Mahmodin (Mahfud MD) as VP candidate.
A standard factory-made politician Mahfud was picked to draw Gen Z which covers around a third of the electors, with his supposed competence and experience. He also hectors and his record repels.
In a separate forum, the 66-year old misogynist explained corruption this way: “In many cases, husbands get involved in crimes because their wives are not good.” The coward’s defence: ‘She made me do it, ya honour’.
When the PDI-P door shut by Mega, Jokowi's ambitious offspring was seduced by Gerindra (Greater Indonesia), the party of cashiered general Prabowo Subianto. He drives a jeep load of unresolved human rights allegations involving kidnappings and killings. He's so ruthless he makes Peter Dutton look woke.
Fabled Aesop wrote that “a man is known by the company he keeps”. Gibran has stained his nascent character. To bypass regulations banning under 40s standing for high office there was an appeal to the Constitutional Court, conveniently chaired by his uncle Anwar Usman. Though the judge has since lost his job for a gross ethical breach, the decision stands.
Gibran has much to learn. He prefers the teenage pout to the mature politicians’ ersatz smile. His rivals dub him anak ingusan (snotty child), but that’s not his TV image. In the overlong over-managed debate he was calm, sharp, articulate, well-prepared and surprisingly confronting.
That breaks the Javanese code of respect for elders, suggesting he’s absorbed Western ways. That will annoy oldies but delight the young and restless.
He was educated in Singapore and Sydney (UTS) so should know about civil liberties -something his political partner fears.
So far he’s snubbed the foreign media. After a stake-out ABC correspondent Bill Birtles only snagged a cursory "feeling confident" tossed out of a moving car’s window.
Though he follows all the rituals, Gibran is not known as a prisoner of religion. His other rival is Muhaimin “Cak Imin” Iskandar, chair of the PKB (National Awakening) Islamic party.
His inclusion is supposed to magnetise the Muslim vote for Dr Anies Baswedan. Indonesia has more Muslims than any other nation so conventional wisdom has meant pandering to this block in return for ‘wet’ (lucrative) ministries.
The political plotters have now discovered that the young are getting better educated and more inclined to pick candidates on merit rather than supposed piety. They don’t come structured so immune to payoffs.
This shrieks problems for Prabowo who has no idea who these voters are and what they want. As a way to their hearts his media advisers have urged him to endorse a cartoon blob, the type used to sell toilet chemicals.
To transform from villain to jolly fellow he does TikTok moves. These simulate bayonet charges. Artists' makeovers turn Gibran sage and Prabowo, who’s old enough to be his grandfather, into a sibling. The ad agencies’ contempt for voters is limitless.
Indonesia’s VPs are called ‘spare tyres’, not there to help with the steering. They must stay in the boot and follow the last century duduk diam (siddown and shuddup) rule, alien to Gibran’s progressive generation.
There’ll be confrontations; Gibran has no military background so won’t accept orders shouted by an autocrat demanding obedience. Should Prabowo make it into the Jakarta White House, the impatient VP won’t stand around waiting for Allah to send the villainous P to his place in the abyss.
Prabowo (with Jokowi, right) should be worried. Like Cassius, Gibran thinks too much; such men are dangerous. His first major public performance proves he runs his own show. Local commentators reckon he'll be jerked by the strings held offstage by his dahlang (puppet master) Dad and continue the policies of infrastructure and development.
That assumption is open to doubt. Kompas media group polls put the undecideds close to 30 per cent. Does this mean the electorate is getting more discriminating, better able to see through the fog of lies and crass diversions? Let it be so.
Duncan Graham has a MPhil degree, a Walkley Award, two Human Rights Commission awards and other prizes for his radio, TV and print journalism in Australia. He lives in East Java.
First published in Pearls & Irritations, 4 January 2024: https://johnmenadue.com/goodish-guy-in-bad-company/
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