OFFERING SERVICE - OR LUSTING FOR POWER?

 The Jakarta Cup’s favourites train in Oz              

 

                 

 It’s on - starters are lined up for the big race next door - with two using Australia to show their international form.

 

Footage-on-a-loop filled TV screens across Indonesia as the Muslim holy fasting month ended. Homes groaned with rellies and neighbours bringing pressies and goodwill.

 

But all also wanted to see the grand Idul Fitri nosh-up in Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo’s Central Java hometown of Solo. Who’d be there? 

 

The President shuffling, uncertain, a ghost of the carefree character who took Malcolm Turnbull on a jolly meet-the-people market tour in 2015.

 

Nearby forcing smiles and failing, the plump Prabowo Subianto, 71, a former general who’d be an embarrassment in any war room but still wants to lead the nation. 

 

Also in wide-shot hobbling with a cane was Megawati Soekarnoputri, 76, the de-facto Queen of the Republic who had just whacked down Prabowo’s hopes by anointing her party’s candidate for the presidency.

 

The white-haired lawyer and Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo, 54, is the man who could be running the show in 2024.

 

 He was the only figure in this parade of ageing oligarchs looking fit and ready for the task of leading a nation of 273 million.

 

He got the nod six weeks ahead of the promised grand reveal. The scuttlebutt is that Mega was forced to choose early because while she dithered other runners were already training, locally and in Australia.

 

Apart from Prabowo, the man to fear was absent at the Solo bash. The latest polls show Dr Anies Baswedan, 53, the NasDem (National Democrat) Party’s pick for the Presidency a nose behind Ganjar, 54, a moderate with no international profile. 

 

He’s in the most popular PDI-P (the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle) the fiefdom of Megawati, daughter of founding president Soekarno. 

 

 Ganjar cultivates an accessible all-folks image, cycling through markets to listen and yarn. It’s the blusukan (impromptu meeting) tactic used a decade ago by Jokowi in his successful upwards journey before a fear of assassins put him behind bodyguards. (In 2019 senior minister Wiranto was stabbed at an official function. He survived.)

 

Baswedan’s environment is education so he was in happy land last month speaking at the ANU, meeting Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Reserve Bank Governor Dr Philip Lowe and chatting to expats in Sydney.

 

There aren’t too many. About 90,000 permanent residents plus 20,000 students are scattered across the wide brown. But they’re the smart influentials who’ll tweet views to friends and families back home.

 

Baswedan’s visit helped polish his profile as a candidate taking foreign affairs, the economy and the environment seriously and at ease with the Western media.

 

Prabowo, the Gerindra (Great Indonesia Movement) boss and self-appointed candidate has also done the dash Down Under as Defence Minister for formal meetings. 

 

To ensure exposure back home he took his personal ‘media team’ that taped him patronising about 40 post-grads (‘work hard’) in Canberra. See, I’m a statesman.

 

Had he fronted the Australian press the questions would have set his backers squirming. Why was he dishonourably discharged from the Army in 1998, and banned from the US for alleged human rights abuses in East Timor and West Papua?

 

What happened to the pro-democracy student activists allegedly tortured by troops under his command? Thirteen ‘disappeared’. With this background how can he hope to find the West’s respect?

 

A former Jakarta-based Australian diplomat wrote: ‘Those who know Prabowo say he has more faces than Sybil. One is never sure which Prabowo is on show, from charming and urbane to raving and irrational.’

 

Anies spent a dozen minutes looking relaxed on the overseas service ABC Australia. Watch the programme here.

 

The toughest question concerned weaponising religion in the 2017 Jakarta Governorship campaign against the ethnic Chinese Christian incumbent Basuki Tjahaja Purnama aka Ahok.

 

Anies’ matter-of-fact response ran: ‘When there’s a Muslim candidate and a Christian candidate, religious issues come into the equation.’

 

In his homeland, Anies’ ethnicity is being used to demonise because he has Hadhrami Arab ancestry from Southern Yemen.

 

This gives him cachet with rigid-stare Muslims though not with the majority abangan pribumi - the native Javanese who take a relaxed approach to their faith and put it second to nationalism. Jokowi is an exemplar.

 

Although NasDem looks middle-road it can’t be measured by the left/right gauge of the Westminster system. An ANU study found Indonesian politics ‘dominated by a cartel of parties characterised by their common desire to share the spoils of office, rather than by ideological or policy differentiation.’ 

 

The minors form what Melbourne University researchers awkwardly call a 'rainbow coalition (nothing to do with gays) of multiple parties without any coherent ideology or clear policy platform’. 

 

The result: No Parliamentary opposition, an essential for a functioning democracy.  

Turnouts are high - 83 per cent of the 191 million registered in 2019. All get a direct vote by pushing a nail through a photo on the ballot paper. 

 

What doesn’t get nailed is corruption which has worsened under Jokowi’s watch. Indonesia is the world’s third largest democracy, though ranked ‘flawed’ because of graft. Whoever becomes the next pres, that needle is unlikely to move, for no candidates seem serious about curbing the national curse.

 

NasDem’s published platform includes a seven-point collection of trite. Example: ‘Build a democracy based on strong people who are called on to bring about a bright future.’ 

 

In 2019 NasDem won just over nine per cent of the vote, but in Indonesian politics voters go for personalities, not parties or policies which rarely get detailed and are soon ignored.

 

About a quarter of the population is aged between 18 and 30,   They want the rule of law to apply to all, less religion in state and private affairs, and a more egalitarian society. 

 

In his two five-year terms Jokowi has focused on infrastructure and health care, but in the human-rights areas which don’t bother the rich, he’s thrown the race.  His successor will probably do the same.  This track’s too heavy.

 

##

 First published in Michael West Media, 28 April 2023: https://michaelwest.com.au/the-race-is-on-the-line-up-to-replace-joko-widodo-as-indonesias-next-president-is-revealed/

KEEPING THE NEXT GENERATION AT BAY

                                   Past their use-by date but still in charge

They ignore the local statistics, but hang on to the exceptional example, Mahathir bin Mohamad.

Next month the Malaysian Prime Minister will turn 94 and although he earlier promised to hand over to Anwar Ibrahim, 71, that has yet to occur.

So if a nonagenarian soufflé can rise twice (Mahathir retired in 2003 after 22 years in Putrajaya’s Seri Perdana) and continue to run a  majority-Muslim nation, why not the hustlers next door?

Indonesia’s gerontocracy controls an archipelago where the median age is about 30, blocking the next generation of talented democrats from steering the country towards the rule of law and away from paternalism and corruption.

Mahathir is the role model for sclerotic politicians in the world’s fourth largest nation when challenged on their fitness to govern.

Jakarta’s megarich oligarchs who dominate Indonesia were already deep in the venal  mire when wee Joko Widodo was squishing his toes in the mud of Central Java’s Solo River.

The nation is ostensibly run by this mild-mannered commoner and just re-elected seventh president of the world’s most populous Muslim nation.  The son of a woodworker with no soldierly ancestors was four when Indonesia came close to suicide. A bloody anti-Communist coup and resulting genocide toppled founding President Soekarno and put the abstruse General Soeharto in charge for the next 32 years.

By the time Widodo graduated from the University of Gadjah Mada in 1985 with a degree in forestry, he presented as an unexceptional lad with interests in business, and later local government.

At that stage Soekarno’s daughter Megawati was boiling to revenge Papa who died in 1970, but her ambitions were brutally squashed by Soeharto. Three years after he fell she became the fifth president.  She was the nation’s first woman leader but a feeble figurehead, largely governed by the army during her term (2001 – 04). 

She tried twice to re-enter the Palace; in 2009 she campaigned with  this year’s contender Prabowo Subianto as her sidekick, but was locked out by unimpressed voters.

Now 72 she runs the Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan (PDI-P) the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, and the country’s largest party. It’s supposed to be secular, but that doesn’t mean an absence of Islamic politics.

Knowing Megawati would likely loose again, the PDI-P reluctantly nominated Widodo, then the can-do Governor of Jakarta. Soon after winning in 2014 he was being publicly humiliated, told who was the dahlang manipulating the shadow figures, and who was the puppet.

At the PDI-P’s national congress everyone present heard Megawati say: ‘As the extended hands of the party, you are its functionaries. If you do not want to be called party functionaries, just get out!’  The President stayed silent.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Harcher commented: ‘It was, in all, a brutal and calculated putdown … He (Widodo) now finds that he has no dignity serving her (Megawati), yet he cannot rule without her.’
For Megawati, Widodo is just keeping the Jakarta White House aired and tidy while her daughter Puan Maharani orders new furniture ahead of moving in next decade.  Recent changes in the Constitution restrict presidents to two five-year terms;
Maharani, 45, is Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Cultural Affairs, a position where her talents have been kept well hidden.
Unless there’s an eruption of enthusiasm and fresh ideas to dazzle the electorate she’ll be wasting her time briefing decorators.
Former President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono – SBY  (2004-2014) is another dynasty planner.  Now 69, he’s trying to hoist his sons into the Cabinet where one can saddle-up for a tilt at the presidency.
Agus, 41, a former major, helps run the old man’s Democratic Party. Edhie, 38, was educated at Perth’s Curtin University and has a seat in Parliament.   Indonesian presidents can choose independent technocrats and members of other parties to serve as ministers.
Subianto was sacked from the army in 1998 for ‘misinterpreting orders’. This year he lost his fourth stab at public office.  After Jakarta thugs failed to change the result with rocks and Molotov cocktails, he’s turned to the Constitutional Court, alleging fraudsters conspired to deliver an 11-point loss.  The commentariat has written off his chances.
Late last year he dithered about nomination and looked sick.  But as a superstitious high-born Javanese megalomaniac he may well try again if the moneymen are persuaded.  He’ll be 73 in 2024; his only child Didit works in Paris. Like Widodo’s three kids, the fashion designer has shown zero interest in following Dad.
Black hair-dye comes in flagons to Jakarta where businessman and Vice President Jusuf Kalla,77, looks perpetually middle-aged;  his successor, slightly younger hardline Islamic cleric Ma’ruf Amin is not so vain, and for now lets his grey locks show. 
Army leftovers continue to influence.  Subianto gathered a platoon of retired parade-ground warriors to bolster his campaign, including SBY.
Widodo’s team includes Wiranto, Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal, and Security Affairs, and Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs.  Both are 72, former top generals, dyers and close advisors to the President.
Also looking awkward out of uniform are Defence Minister Ryacudu, 69, and Widodo’s chief of staff  Moeldoko, 61.
Democrats and human rights activists fret that the remnants of Soeharto’s dictatorship  are still on stage, in the wings, directing and producing in rehearsal rooms, wistful of the days when voters clapped continuously.
Shrewd players would note the shrouded skeleton with the scythe has a permanent walk-on role, so head for the exit.  Instead the power-greedy focus on Malaysia’s Mahathir, once labeled ‘recalcitrant’ by Paul Keating.  They’re in the front rows.

 First published in Pearls and Irritations, 11 June 2019 


http://johnmenadue.com/duncan-graham-past-their-use-by-date-but-still-current/

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH

Polishing the Plin-Plan President      

Jolly Jokowi - man of the people - as seen before his election

                                                  

The always dapper Indonesian President Joko (Jokowi) Widodo is a splendid advocate for batik.  Most days he wears a new design; whatever the colour or pattern the traditional shirts dazzle on his slim athletic frame. 

His plump PDIP (Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle) boss and former president Megawati Soekarnoputri, who famously dismissed him as ‘a party official’, once remarked that he couldn’t be a politician because he wasn’t sufficiently portly.  She might have added ‘Machiavellian’.

If Jokowi wasn’t running the world’s third largest democracy he could grace a catwalk for models are supposed to be seen, not heard.

Unfortunately being the seventh president of the Republic requires him to give speeches. These neither arouse not inspire - they anesthetise. The pause, so important in oratory and mastered by Megawati’s father first president Soekarno, becomes an embarrassment with the reserved Javanese:  Has he lost his way, his notes or both?

It’s not the only disenchantment with the man who seized the top job in the 2014 direct election by a narrow margin.  He won not so much for what he was, but what he wasn’t – a member of the corrupt oligarchy that’s run the nation of 250 million for so long and so badly.

Unreal expectations were also projected onto the former Governor of Jakarta, considered a friend of the wong cilik (ordinary folk) by taking walkabouts (blusukan) to hear the word on the street.

The illogical leap followed that he’d be a Lee Kuan Yew scourge of corruptors and a compassionate Nelson Mandela on human rights and social issues. A reformer, though not a liberal; the term carries negative baggage, particularly with Muslims.

The man Indonesia wanted - but hasn't got

These hopes have been shredded with Jokowi’s failure to wield a big stick against the rent-seekers and his flawed reasoning for executing drug traffickers.

Economically he’s plin-plan - one minute a protectionist, the next a free trader; anti West, then welcoming foreign investors.

His politically savvy supporters aware of the disappointments have been involved in makeovers partly led by Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi.  Unfortunately they’ve compounded the problem

Retno is the first woman to hold the position and a surprise pick.  Jakarta scuttlebutt claims her credentials include a close relationship with Megawati.

The former Ambassador to the Netherlands doesn’t have the intellectual firepower of her predecessor Dr Marty Natalegawa. This is obvious from attempts to bolster Jokowi’s credentials as an international statesman when all evidence indicates his policy priorities and personal interests are domestic.

To counter this image Retno took letters urging peace from Jokowi to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz. 

No request had been made for Indonesia to broker a deal.  Unsurprisingly nothing came from the trip – Indonesia, like Saudi Arabia, is a Sunni Muslim nation that trashes Shia – the majority faith in Iran.

On her return Retno, who presumably hatched the idea, made much of the 20,000 kilometres travelled on her ‘diplomacy marathon’ but nothing on the results:

“We in the Islamic world … need to ensure that the region where most of the Muslim population resides, the Middle East, is peaceful, stable and prosperous, and continue to voice Islam as rakhmatan lil alamin (a blessing to the universe).”

The next stage in the attempted transformation  came during this month’s (Feb) trip to the US-ASEAN Summit where it seems the President said little and achieved less.

‘Jokowi conveys words of wisdom’ said one headline over a story about a courtesy call to Choummaly Sayasone of Laos on becoming chair of ASEAN: ”I am sure the chairmanship will lead ASEAN to be better and more successful.”

If Jokowi thinks the octogenarian  former general who  has been running the People’s Revolutionary Party in his Marxist-Leninist  state  for the past decade can put pep and purpose into the 39-year old ASEAN then the Indonesian is letting diplomatic niceties eclipse reality.

While Jokowi was heading to California, Indonesia’s  TV One (a station owned by a conglomerate headed by Aburizal Bakrie, a strong opponent of Jokowi during the 2014 election) telecast an  ‘exclusive’ interview with the President.

This turned out to be a brief love-in with lawyer and media executive Karni Ilyas heavily buttressed with thumpty-thump music and fast-edited  clips of the President looking decisive.

Jokowi claimed problems of infrastructure were holding back the nation, but failed to explain  how the roads will be rapidly  broadened and lengthened before gridlock cripples the economy.  The mounting frenzy against LGBT groups and ‘deviant’, sects of Islam didn’t get a look in.

Jokowi comes across as a nice one-on-one guy, not the tangiest spice on the menu but the sort householders might elect as their RT (Rukun Tetangga) neighbourhood chief. He’d sort out stray cat and rubbish problems without snarling or taking sides; there’d be no suggestions he’d trouser their donations for paving the footpath.  Nor would he initiate anything.

The wong cilik still seem to like him as his former opponents are in more disarray than the US Republicans.  However it would be naïve to think no plots exist in a country where conspiracies go with the rice.

The real power is muttered to be the tough-talking US-trained  former four-star General Luhut Binsar Panjaitan, Chief of Staff of the President’s Executive Office, whose credentials include a past business partnership with Jokowi. 

Despite his military background Luhut dresses plainly.  In batik he looks scruffy – so little chance of promotion – particular as he’s reported to be much disliked by Megawati.

So for the meantime Jokowi looks svelte and safe – provided he stays home and stops trying to be someone else.

(First published in New Mandala 23 February 2016.  See: http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2016/02/23/polishing-the-plin-plan-president/

##

PDI-P CONGRESS: PARTY BEFORE PRESIDENT

Mega eyes our voting
system       

Where's Wally?  The PDI-P promotes its congress, 
but not the nation's president, who's also a red jacket.  
The image on the top left
opposite Megawati is of her father, Soekarno (d 1970)
                                        

Megawati Soekarnoputri (the second name is a patronymic -
daughter of Soekarno) doesn’t want direct elections. That’s what she told
applauding delegates at the Bali conference this month (April) of her Partai Demokrasi Indonesia – Perjuangan
(PDI-P – the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle.

‘Her’ party because it’s not an organisation to develop and
implement new ideas from the smart young to boost the Republic’s economy, lift
millions out of poverty, repair the crumbling infrastructure and raise
education levels.  It’s a vehicle to keep
her family in power. 

Mega has no formal authority.  The PDI-P has the largest number of seats in
the Parliament (109 / 560) but a coalition of opposition parties holds total
control. Despite this she jerks President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo’s strings,
reminding all that the former furniture salesman is just a ‘party worker’ who wouldn’t
have the top job  had it not been for her
imprimatur.

She’s right.  Had she
ignored the overwhelmingly negative surveys and stood herself in last July’s
election as originally planned, Indonesia would now be led by President Prabowo
Subianto.  He’s the scion of a family
with a centuries old lineage, a hard-line former general with a bad human
rights record, and once son-in-law of the nation’s second president, the
dictator Soeharto.

If Mega wasn’t the self-imposed head of the party she
founded last century she’d now be toast. 
Although she was Indonesia’s fifth president between 2001 and 2004 she
inherited the position when President Abdurrahman Wahid was impeached, and did
little more than let the army and her mates run the show.

That was too much like the bad old days for an electorate hungry
for reform; in two later presidential direct vote contests she was soundly rejected
by the people.

Of course this wasn’t her fault, but the ‘treachery’ of
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) who quit her Cabinet over claims of being
sidelined.  For a while he became a media
darling and in 2004 beat his former boss to become the nation’s sixth president.  She’s never forgiven him.

In the villages and crowded kampongs of Java, sun-wrinkled
portraits of first president Soekarno can be found hanging in even the poorest
of homes.  He died 45 years ago but
remains an iconic figure, symbol of the glory of Indonesia’s hard-won independence
from the stubborn colonial Dutch and held in awe by the nostalgic elderly.

Mega believes that she has inherited that aura, even if
betrayal, incompetence, fickle voters and age frustrate her ambitions.  So she’ll nurture the flame until her
children Mohammad Prananda Prabowo, Mohammad Rizki Pramata – and particularly, Puan Maharani, learn how to grasp their destiny. 

Three generations - it's our party and we'll do what we like.  
The Javanese slogan says: 'Don't cut the roots'.


(Mega has been married three times, her father nine.  Her younger sister Rachmawati Soekarnoputri
is a leading member in the opposition Prabowo’s party, Gerindra.)

Addressing the conference, where the 68-year old matriarch
was acclaimed supreme head for a further five years, Mega denounced direct
voting as a Western import.

In the present anti-foreigner climate - aggravated by Tony
Abbott linking 2004 tsunami aid with mercy for drug runners on death row - that’s
the sort of claim that gets delegates on their feet and stamping.  

Everything currently wrong in the resource-rich archipelago
is the fault of sinister others plundering the nation’s wealth, corrupting the
young with evil ideas, and interfering in sovereign legal processes; purge the
outsiders and all will be right.  That’s
what her Dad did in the 1950s and so excavated an even bigger pit of economic
mismanagement.

Mega doesn’t want the Indonesian system where the president is
chosen by the people whatever party he or she represents; that’s populism.

What would suit her is the Australian process.  Under our law voters tick candidates from
parties that have already proclaimed their leaders. Electors might not like the
individual but you approve their party’s policies. 

If our northern neighbour had used that arrangement Mega might
now be President of Indonesia for the second time because her party topped the
polls. 

Instead the man sitting on the edge of the Palace sofas once
comfortably occupied by Mega as a child, is the easy going not over-bright Jokowi,
briefly Governor of Jakarta and before that a likeable small town mayor.  Now he’s floundering, way out of his depth in
the fetid crocodile swamp that passes for Jakarta politics

Jokowi is not part of the feudal Javanese military, business
and semi-regal dynasties that have run the world’s fourth largest nation since
Soekarno proclaimed independence from the colonial Dutch in 1945. That was part
of his appeal.  

Despite getting little campaign help from Megawati, but a
lot from the hopeful young, he won by eight million votes over Prabowo in what
was widely interpreted as the triumph of the little man.

Sadly Jokowi, 53, has proved to be exactly that. If there’s
a statesman’s gene in Jokowi it has yet to become dominant. No one is saying he
has greasy palms, but when given the people’s mandate he fumbled the pass,
dropped it and then lost direction. 

Elected on promises of no more transactional appointments, a
cabinet of altruistic reformers and a massive crack down on corruption, he’s
failed on every pledge.

He also told Cabinet ministers to abandon senior party roles
to concentrate on their jobs. Mega’s daughter Puan, Coordinating Minister for
Human Development and Culture, has ignored her leader. 

Mum made Puan the party head of political and social
affairs, and handpicked 25 others for top tasks saying she’d tested them all –
but only she knew the test.

The PDI-P has another record:  It’s the party with the most members jailed
by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). One serving politician was even
arrested in his hotel at the congress for alleged bribery.  In a news story The Jakarta Post reported ‘the party’s central board is full of
graft-tainted figures and politicians with dubious reputations.’

Again and again the terms ‘trustworthiness’ and ‘loyalty’
were used by Mega when discussing her choice of party officials.  Missing were words like ‘ability’,
‘education’, ‘diligence’ and ‘intelligence’. Jokowi’s demand for selection by
merit went unheeded.  No doubt policies
for the nation’s betterment and improved foreign relations were debated in
depth, but these escaped detection by journalists.

None of this would matter much if there was a viable
opposition with a fresh agenda waiting to take over the shambles.  Prabowo, 63, was widely expected to savage
Jokowi till he became ineffectual, though the President is doing that without
outside help.

However Prabowo has his own problems with two parties in his
coalition ripped asunder by internal leadership challenges.

That’s not an issue in the PDI-P.  If there were any delegates who thought it’s
time to remind that the party calls itself Democratic they are staying
quiet.  When the leader of the world’s
third largest democracy lacks the courage to confront his matron, who else
would dare?

##

 First published in On Line opinion 14 April 2015.  For comments see:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=17259

Further reading:

Liam Gammon in the ANU's New Mandala:     

http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2015/04/15/what-weve-got-here-is-failure-to-communicate/

INDONESIA'S HOPES FOR NEW ERA CRUMBLE

Jokowi’s Mega Problem      


                                     

Indonesia’s political scene is so weird  that even Canberra’s most convoluted  machinations are but Playschool.

Decried by The Jakarta Post editor Meidyatama Surodiningrat for its ‘hugger-mugger nature, filled with distortions, strange associations, devious schemes and inflexible standpoints’ our northern neighbour is now performing a Greek tragedy.

The lead role stars the wilful Megawati Soekarnoputri, Indonesia’s fifth president (2001- 2004) and self-appointed head of the nation’s marginally most popular political party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, known as PDI-P.

Like an African ‘people’s democratic republic’, the title is a misnomer.  Mega, 68, recently agreed to continue running the PDI-P for the next five years.  She’s a lady who doesn’t tolerate opposition, so gets none.

Mega means Cloud Goddess in Javanese.  The wati suffix indicates a woman. Her other name is a patronymic. She is one of first president Soekarno’s nine children from nine wives, but the one most determined to maintain dynastic politics.

Soekarno was ousted in a coup d’état 50 years ago by General Soeharto who went on to run the nation with the army’s help till 1998.

Mega started the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) but was given little breathing space by Soeharto’s authoritarian administration. In 1996 the government, fearing the Soekarno name could rally emerging opposition, tried to engineer a violent takeover of the party.  

In the riot five people died. 150 were injured and 23 disappeared. Perjuangan (Struggle) was then added to the PDI’s name.

When democracy was restored  to the nation in 1999 the PDI-P won most votes in the election contested by 48 parties. At that time the president was appointed by Parliament, which chose Islamic cleric Abdurrahman Wahid with Mega as his deputy.

After Wahid was impeached in 2001 she held the top job till defeated in the first direct election of 2004 by a Cabinet minister she’d sacked – former general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY).

Had she then retired gracefully to become a roving ambassador for a worthy cause, Mega might have retained respect as the first woman to lead the world’s most populous Islamic nation. But power is a narcotic, and Mega an addict.

Instead Indonesians recall an aloof policy-free president largely controlled by the military who didn’t use her power to pursue justice for her supporters who were killed in 1996. 

Five years later she stood for the presidency but was again defeated by SBY.  She wanted a third crack at last year’s election but was dissuaded by advisers who read the runes and knew the Soekarno brand had passed its use-by date.  More than 40 per cent of the population is under 24 so lacks the personal knowledge of the first two presidents’ eras that drives the decisions of older folks.

Last year Mega belatedly endorsed Jakarta Governor Joko (Jokowi) Widodo ahead of her millionaire daughter Puan Maharani, now Mum’s pick as Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Cultural Affairs.

Jokowi, who won with a margin of eight million votes, was supposed to be the bright new hope, a former furniture trader and can-do small town mayor with the common touch. He had no connections with the Jakarta oligarchs convinced they own the Republic and the right to run it as a regal trust dispensing grace and favour.

Mega certainly thinks she controls Jokowi and can dictate who sits in his Cabinet.  (See OLO 29 October 2014) -  but also decide who runs the notoriously graft-ridden police.

Her selection was three-star general Budi Gunawan an old friend from her presidential days.  The problem is that Gunawan, who is either a biz-whiz or a crooked cop, earns under $AUD 2,000 a month yet has properties, goods and cash worth $AUD 2.3 million.

Unsurprisingly the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), nicknamed the gecko, thought these figures a tad odd and started investigating.  The police, known as the crocodile, retaliated by arresting senior KPK figures on allegations of perjury from their pre-KPK time as lawyers.

Here was the chance for Jokowi to assert his authority and back the popular KPK that’s already put many high-level crims in clink.  Instead he flip-flopped, then postponed a decision, pleasing no-one. 

While observers assumed the new president’s enemy would be his defeated rival, former Soeharto son-in-law Prabowo Subianto, most attacks so far have been green-on-blue.

Jokowi is the engineer of his own problems, letting the reservoir of electoral support run to waste. On the shelves of Gramedia, the nation’s foremost publisher and bookseller, are at least 20 titles featuring the new president.

Many are cut-and-paste exercises in hagiography. Some are comics. All are gushingly optimistic, reflecting the 2014 ‘It’s time’ mood.  There’s also a feature film. The Second Coming would be hard pushed to eclipse the joyous hope of yesteryear. 

Like the leader of his great southern neighbour, Jokowi soon shattered promises. Most notable was his pledge to install only the most competent selfless visionaries in Cabinet – not Mega’s selfish old mates seeking rewards for questionable past services.

Had he been a brilliant orator like his matron’s Dad, the President might just have been able to keep the ranks in step.

Sadly he’s an appallingly bad public speaker, hesitant, repetitive and uncomfortable with crowds.  Watching him perform on TV encourages toilet trips. Only in one-on-one chats with soft journos does he come across as affable, though not charismatic.

Apart from his determination to make the Republic a maritime power, Jokowi’s foreign policy is indifference, unnecessarily creating international ill-will through his obsession for putting traffickers before firing squads, simplistically arguing this will solve the drug problem.

The President’s best hope is to cut ties with Mega while he still has some credit in the bank of public goodwill. Unseating her would be impossible – there’ll be no spill motion from the ranks.

A smart politician would offer Mega a splendid title and a sinecure in New York or Paris, some city with elite shops and far away, but Jokowi isn’t that clever. 

The only chance is to follow his predecessor’s example; SBY created the Democratic Party (himself as chair, wife Ani as vice-chair and son Edhie as secretary general) to get the presidency.

Maybe Jokowi has left it too late. Supporters might fill the streets, but he won’t get airborne without the financial thrust of several media millionaires.

The biographies will eventually be remaindered – then pulped.  That could be the fate of their subject unless he rapidly learns how to seize the moment, disarm the disrupters and lead the world’s third largest democracy into a future of fairness it so badly needs.

(First published in On Line Opinion, 9 February 2014.  For comments see: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=17074

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JOKOWI DISCOVERS REALPOLITIK

Oligarchs with a country     

                        

Has Indonesia’s new president Joko (Jokowi) Widodo read the ancient works of Chinese general Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War?

In personal interviews with local media questions have focussed on his breakfasts and wife Iriana’s dress.  Like her husband she is no fashionista, preferring plain and simple, which will infuriate the establishment’s elaborately coiffed ice matrons shouldering Gucci bags of sharpened hatpins.

There has been no interest in what books are on the couple’s bedside table, probably because the reporters – like many Indonesians – are not great readers of anything longer than a 140 character tweet.

Nonetheless Indonesia’s seventh president seems to understand the value of a quote attributed to the warrior who lived five centuries before Christ:  Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

How else to explain Jokowi singling out his ‘friend’ Prabowo Subianto for applause during the 20 October Presidential inauguration ceremony? The former general with a black human-rights record was Jokowi’s bitter opponent in the 9 July direct election.  Prabowo still runs a ruthless campaign to unseat the man who beat him for the top job by eight million votes.

Another answer is that Jokowi is Javanese, an ethnic group that believes in harmony and prefers to say ‘yes’ instead of ‘no’ to avoid embarrassment, even when the negative is meant – a trait that can drive naïve Westerners nuts. Perhaps the gesture went some way to placating a man with boiling anger and cash enough to create havoc and destroy the people’s choice.  It certainly put Jokowi on the high moral ground, if such a position exists in politics.

If Jokowi truly considers his rival a friend, what constitutes an enemy?  Prabowo’s campaign trawled pits of slime in bids to destroy Jokowi, claiming he was a Christian planning to eradicate Islam, a communist Chinese born in Singapore and had fathered an illegitimate son.  By comparison, the Liberal’s campaign against PM Julia Gillard was sweet and civilised.

Prabowo, who is not a parliamentarian, has assembled a coalition of parties that outnumber Jokowi’s supporters in the national legislature.  This group has already passed an anti-democracy law cancelling regional elections in favour of Jakarta selecting district governors, regents and mayors.

This was the system used by the authoritarian General Suharto who led the nation for 32 years; he was also Prabowo’s former father-in-law.

Jokowi was a furniture trader from a small town in Central Java before being elected as local mayor, then governor of Jakarta by popular vote – an impossible political journey in the future should the new law stand.

He has no known family connections with Jakarta’s military, business, high-born or religious elite, qualities that make him attractive to ordinary Indonesians, but poison to the corrupt and powerful bent on retrieving their authority.

Commented Driyarkara School of Philosophy academic B Herry-Priyono in The Jakarta Post: ‘Most countries have oligarchs, but in Indonesia the oligarchs have a country. They have been lording it over us for so long, arresting the nation from its march toward the common good.”

Six days after his inauguration, and numerous false starts, Jokowi unwrapped his 34-member ‘Working Cabinet’, after the Corruption Eradication Commission had recommended the exclusion of eight candidates.

The ceremony on the Presidential Palace lawn had the ministry in identical white shirts. It was less than dignified; many ministers dashed across the grass to get in line, though such behaviour was clearly beneath human development and culture minister Puan Maharani; the ambitious but unpopular granddaughter of first president Sukarno just strode.

 She could afford to take her time: Her mum is Megawati Sukarnoputri, the proud and stubborn leader of the PDIP-Party that sponsored Jokowi after advisors persuaded her not to stand for president, having been rejected by the electorate in the 2004 and 2009 elections.  She and Puan gave him little support, reportedly saying he was only a ‘party official’.  There’s much talk that she’s the puppet master.

Foreign minister Retno Marsudi is a career diplomat and former Ambassador to the Netherlands, the first woman to hold the top job. Nine ministers have business backgrounds and nine are academics, including Adelaide University PhD graduate Pratikno, rector of Yogyakarta’s University Gadjah Mada.  He’s the new State Secretary. Jokowi is a UGM science graduate, and so is Retno.

A major concern is the selection of former general Ryamizard Ryacudu, a noted hardliner and minister when Megawati was the fifth president.  Human rights groups have condemned his promotion, alleging a bad record in Aceh where unsuccessful attempts were made to destroy local rebels through overwhelming brute force.

Unlike the Westminster system, ministers can be drawn from anywhere and are not always politicians or active members of parties.  The response from the Jakarta commentariat to the Cabinet has been lukewarm, tinted with concern, largely because 14 politicians have been included, apparently for supporting the PDI-P rather than for their expertise and achievements, as promised in earlier Jokowi statements.

Jokowi and his Cabinet will need to ride the bureaucracy hard or the planned reforms to the nation’s economy and infrastructure will never take root. Indonesia’s 4.5 million khaki-uniformed bureaucrats are skilled in obfuscation, doing what they want, not what the politicians direct.  Yes, Minister could have been written for Indonesia.

The President will also need to nip at the heels of some ministers, reminding them they’re there to serve, not be served.

This month Indonesia scaled the peak of inflated expectations in the hype cycle; from now on our northern neighbour will be heading to the trough of disillusionment before the government rises to the plateau of productivity.

Along the way beware the oligarchs. They never forget and seldom forgive. 

(First published in On Line Opinion, 29 October 2014.  For comments: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=16810

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ELECTION 2014: INDONESIA'S CHALLENGES

The Year of Testing Democracy

Next month (April) the world’s third largest democracy and our nearest Asian neighbour goes to the polls. Duncan Graham reports from Malang, East Java:

It doesn’t look right.

There’s just 20 metres of posters when the banners and billboards previously stretched almost to the Bromo-Semeru Massif backdrop.  They flutter along a small bridge over a trash-choked drain, and can be seen only from one lane of the four-way intersection.

Other travellers might be unaware elections in the world’s third largest democracy are just around the corner, though they’d be bumped up to date once they turned on TV. 

Here the ads are more overpowering, though only three of the 19 free-to-air stations in my area are focussing seriously on the contest. Two of the three are owned by contenders.

In previous elections the streetscape was curtained and spanned by gaudy banners, the roads blocked by paid paramilitary-style motorcycle gangs roaring support for candidates. 

This time local authorities are curbing excesses, though things may change when the campaign gets underway for the presidential election on 9 July. That’s the big one – the parliamentary seats are a sideshow.

Outsiders often assume religion drives Indonesian politics and society. Faith is a powerful force, but it runs far behind nationalism. Proof is in the ballot box.

The principal Islamic movement Partai Keadilan Sejahtera scored under eight per cent at the 2009 election.  The name translates as justice and prosperity, but its elected members have since proved to be as sleazy and graft-ridden as the rest in a country ranked 114 on Transparency International’s corruption perception index.  (Australia is in ninth place, NZ at the top.)

Politicians using Islamic props like the Ka’aba and headscarf just bump along the bottom when compared to those draped in the secular red and white national flag. 

After proclaiming independence in 1945 Indonesians led by first president Soekarno fought a brutal four-year guerrilla war against the stubborn colonial Dutch. The revolutionaries’ success still stiffens spines.

Those who knew Soekarno (he was deposed in 1965, the ‘year of living dangerously’) recall a charismatic leader mesmerising millions with soaring oratory, but a flawed economist, toppled by the army that hated his dalliance with communism.

His vanquisher, General Soeharto maintained ruthless control of the nation through his army-backed Orde Baru (New Order) administration, till a popular uprising in 1998 when the economy crashed.

By getting into democracy first Indonesia has avoided the violent dissent now flaring in the Middle East.

Megawati Soekarnoputri, 67, Soekarno’s daughter by the third of his nine wives, apparently believes she’s destined to lead the nation of 240 million as head of the Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).

The party came third in the 2009 legislative elections but the people, not the politicians, choose the president.  In a largely policy-free campaign electors will back personalities they recognise.

The polls are clear; if Megawati stands she’ll lose.  She was president between 2001 2004, but her term was a yawn and she was widely seen as a puppet of the military.

Since then she has been defeated twice by former general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY). He’ll stand down this year as required by the constitution after ten years marked by economic stability and a growing middle class, but rising religious intolerance. 

Indonesian elections are colourful events.  Literally.  Each party has its own hue. Voters poke a hole through a party symbol on the ballot paper. If no clear winner there’ll be run offs. Overall the system is fair.

Megawati dithers on who’ll carry the red bullhead flag of the PDI-P into the  presidential ballot.  She says she won’t decide till after the 560-seat People’s Representative Council results are clear.

Party pragmatists are urging her to anoint Joko Widodo, 52, the popular Mettalica-loving mayor of Jakarta with polls predicting he’d be a shoe-in for the top job.

Jokowi, as he’s known, represents a clean break from the military-dominated past. In a nation where voting is not compulsory (71 per cent turned out in 2009) only an exciting candidate is likely to stir the disillusioned young and an electorate fed up with money politics.

Indonesia is youth dominated. One third of the nation’s 187 million eligible voters are under 24, meaning few have any real knowledge of the repressive Soeharto era.

The press is now the freest and most robust in Asia, though Indonesians are not great readers and prefer electronic media for their information.

About 64 million people are wired, mainly through Facebook, meaning candidates who can’t relate to this demographic are handicapped. However most users live in the big cities, not the highly populated regions where folk are less tech-smart.

Twelve parties are eligible but only four have a chance.  Apart from the PDI-P they are Golkar, Soeharto’s old outfit fronted by mining and media tycoon Aburizal Bakrie, SBY’s Democrats, now riven by industrial scale graft and no candidate of note, and the Great Indonesia Movement (Gerindra).

This is headed by former general Prabowo Subianto, 63, once Soeharto’s son-in-law and still on a US visa black list for his alleged involvement in human rights abuses.

Till now candidates have needed to be dollar mega-millionaires, own media outlets and have close links to the military to be taken seriously.

Jokowi, once a furniture exporter, meets none of these criteria.  Paradoxically that rules him in to an electorate weary of the uniform sameness of the autocratic Soeharto-era elites awkwardly trying to fit into democracy dress.  

Instead he wears casual plaid shirts and is prone to blusukan, taking walkabouts to hear the people’s gripes and check on the city’s infamously lax public servants’ work habits.

Jokowi has been governor of Jakarta only since October 2012.  Southeast Asia’s most dysfunctional city is again suffering under the annual floods that have so far killed 23 and displaced 20,000.

A survey by Indonesia’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies shows Jokowi has such overwhelming support he’s likely to win on the first round. This despite no form in national politics, or skills in foreign affairs.

Endy Bayuni, senior editor with The Jakarta Post has no doubt this election is critical,

writing that ‘Indonesia’s oligarchs (are) trying to steal democracy from the people.

‘The election may mark the end of democracy and the beginning of an oligarchic political system commonly found throughout Asia. Or it could give Indonesia a new five-year lease to strengthen the democratic government and culture’.    

(First published in On Line Opinion 13 March 2013. A day later it was announcede that Jokowi would be a presidential candidate)

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