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Jokowi may look good in batik, but he’s not cut-out for office, writes Duncan Graham. That’s because the Indonesian president’s shiny promise of reform has lost all its lustre, and he’s not tainted enough to function effectively in the country’s politics.
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 nor inspire – they anesthetise. The pause, so important in oratory and mastered by Megawati’s father, Indonesia’s first president Sukarno, becomes an embarrassment with the reserved Javanese. Has Jokowi 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.
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 February’s 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 the troubled country becoming chair of ASEAN Jokowi said, “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 LGBTI 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 na├пve 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.
Australian journalist and author Duncan Graham lives in East Java and writes for the Indonesian media.
what a good wrap up. You forgot the protest in SF over 1965….
Love your stuff.
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Great piece. Cutting and brutal. About time someone told it as it is. Sad for Indonesia..and the region.
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Duncan. While I acknowledge that those who wear socks in their sandals are in an unassailable position to mock those who wear batik shirts, I have to disagree with everything else.
Widodo managed to have his country taken off the Terrorism Financing and Money Laundering blacklist at the very same time as executing foreign citizens from those very same countries whose votes he needed to get off the blacklist. What an expression of power that was. Iran and North Korea must have been astounded. Iran only kidnaps foreigners to gain leverage. What could this man in batik, or someone like him do, if they had nukes? Behind the folksy batik shirt is a man of steel, ruthless, rat cunning, a winner.
Pearshaped wins a toffee apple. pls refer to Sinjai ppl smuggler H.Ambo first exposed in NM –
http://www.newmandala.org/2015/08/18/who-is-behind-the-bangkok-blast/
Then earlier this month while plotting to send anothe boat via Kupang, Ambo collared by Kodim Sinjai’s finest
http://kodam-wirabuana.mil.id/2016/02/15/intel-kodim-1424sinjai-gagalkan-20-orang-imigran-gelap/
Nice to know somebody reads this stuff.
Meanwhile, the trial of the smugglers allegedy bribed to return to Rote has mysteriously vanished. After having been delayed because they couldn’t find a lawyer, then again because the alleged bribe money had gone ‘missing,’ the latest excuse is they’re looking for expert witnesses. Feel free to speculate the men in batik shirts have been doing deals.
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Indonesia deserves him.
It’s a basket case afterall.
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I think that what we are dealing with here is a question of western media propaganda in support of the “rebalancing”, the “pivot to Asia”, the “let’s find someone to hail as a Democratic Beacon of the Region” movement that seems to determine the framing for almost all “reportage” emanating out of SE Asia.
If Indonesian folks are anything as politically savvy as the lower middle- and working-class Thais I know, they never expected the kind of miraculous transformations nor the democratic enhancement that readers of the NY Times were bludgeoned into expecting from ol’ Joko all the way back in 2012.
At the moment, MSM has gone silent on Indonesia, the way they almost always are on Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. It is no longer even remotely possible to raise a democratic banner over his presidency and wave it to show the world that SE Asia CAN be democratic, therefore western, therefore under the Yanqui thumb and therefore friendly.
Thailand is now the regional demon (no matter how much of the junta’s “evil” is just a slightly expanded version of business as usual in Thailand), replacing Myanmar, which is now the beacon of democracy that Indonesia was when Joko was still running and just after he won.
It will be much harder for the Fullers and the Fishers of the western propaganda machine to let go of “The Lady” the way they have shamelessly dumped Widodo. So I fear the Rohingya and various other repressed, murdered and vilified minorities in Myanmar will have to go invisible for a longish while in order to keep the Beacon of Democracy banner raised high over the head of the daughter of the father of Myanmar as she plays Mom to the masses.
If Vietnam turns out to be a good little partner in the TPP scam, I wonder if there is any way MSM correspondents will be able to find a way to spin Vietnam as the next regional bright-spot? Politburo: Beacon of Democracy?
After all, as Thaksin was killing thousands in a drug war, buying up and shutting down media and placing family members and corporate flunkies throughout the Thai army and bureaucracy, Thailand was apparently the Democratic Beacon du Jour according to the bright lights that cover the region for their editors and the State Department and all the sympathetic folks back home.
So anything is possible in the media. Change you can believe in.
(If you’re getting your news from these lads)
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Trying to pin Widowos loss of popularity on the western media is a stretch. The contest was between a highly popular mayor and a former general in the dictatorship. The populist mayor won on the basis of anti corruption and a release from the old order but immediately was dragged into a war against his own party that led to the demise of the only effective corruption unit in the country. A lot of people are dissatisfied and now say the general would have been better.
Attempts by westerners to overstate their own influence are amusing. Indonesians are masters at the political game and well capable of inventing their own conspiracy theories.
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No one is trying to “pin Widodo’s loss of popularity on the western media”.
In response to an article by a western journalist lamenting Widodo’s “fall” from the avatar of SE Asian democracy to an “advocate for batik” I merely pointed out that the “unreal expectations” that were projected onto Widodo were likely more influential in the minds of western media consumers than in those of Indonesian voters.
In the western media’s fairy tale narrative, the evil general faced off with the Capraesque common man and democracy and the common man triumphed.
It was nonsense then and it would be nonsense now to think that this has something to do with Widodo’s own failings.
Western journalists promote the same narrative again and again in SE Asia, but SE Asia remains SE Asia.
I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to pin western media’s lack of honesty and willingness to deal with complexity on western media at all.
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One more thing of Ms Marsudi who seem to be blunder prone – on internstional level, at one stage, she proposed to the EU that Indonesian to be given visa free access. This request was made around the time of the height of the migrant crisis, oblivious to the fact that as the world’s largest muslim country by population, this couldve been deemed insensitive. Not to mention the lack of consideration that Indonesia is poverty ridden developing nation. The fact that she served in the Netherlands only adds to the questioning of her credential.
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Free the Jis teachers and cleaners.
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Duncan, do you understand Indonesian? You don’t have to be a fluent Bahasa speaker but at least you should understand what these people at ILC forum talk about non-Indonesians and certainly about Jokowi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tt_t8Qqlmw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6W3VOkjZHk
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A long list of how foreigners, western companies in particular, plunders the country of its riches with the help of crooked political elites. With the latest one being an Australian company trying to cheat them out of Masella gas deposit off the coast of the Moluccas. At least thats the gist of this debate.
Just to give a background, Indonesia by nature is a feudal society, where the common practice is anyone from anywhere free to take whatever they wish so long as gift being presented to whoever holds the gun at the time. This unlikely to change in foreseeable future. Any commotion now is just transition of power. Will soon be business as usual.
Commedia Indonesiana at its best, with possible bloodbath in the end. And hundreds of millions trampled in poverty, breeding resentment to foreigners with their reference of prosperity is the way of some wealthy middle eastern countries.
Nothing about Widodo though. Nil.
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This speaker below speaks like a Widodo admirer who said Widodo looks dumb but smart enough to choose his right-hand men such as Luhut and US-educated minister Rizal Ramli. In general, Indonesia’s neighbors like to see this sprawling archipelago backward, corrupted, and easy to cheat because if Indonesia is strong and powerful, its neighbours will suffer and become paranoid. Look at China now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tt_t8Qqlmw
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Somebody apparently needs to tell Retno Marsudi, perhaps even the catwalk-oriented author of this post, that more Muslims live outside the Middle East than in it. The Muslim populations of Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan vastly outnumber the Muslims of the Middle East. This non-secret fact should have found its way into some briefing or other before Retno set out on her travels.
Mr Graham suggests that Indonesia, like Saudi Arabia, ‘trashes’ Shia. Let’s not push this argument too far. As far as I know, Indonesia has yet to behead a Shia cleric, which Saudi Arabia did a few months ago. For that matter, Indonesia has yet to behead any Saudi maids.
Retno’s attempt to mediate between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which latter country will probably appoint its first female foreign minister some time next century, reminds one of earlier, fruitless Indonesian mediation efforts. Gus Dur once claimed that he had intervened to solve no fewer than thirteen international disputes. His calculation may have been wrong, however, as arithmetic was never his forte.
Megawati also hoped to use her remote acquaintance with Kim Jong-il when he ruled the DPRK to bring about peace and reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula. Kim, whom she had met as a child when he accompanied his father on a visit to Indonesia, at least was ‘portly’, thereby meeting an important Megawati condition for competence in politicians.
Incidentally, Mr Graham is himself rather casual with arithmetic. ASEAN is a little older than 39 years, though the adhesion of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar occurred long after ASEAN’s foundation. Maybe that’s what he had in mind.
Similarly, three stars do not make four. Panjaitan was a three-star general when he was still on active service. He acquired his fourth star only on retirement. General Wiranto, who is indeed a former four-star general, once pointed out this distinction to SBY publicly by means of the inscription on a wreath congratulating him on his being elected president, either the first or second time. SBY is like Panjaitan only a former three-star, but a retired four-star. When four-stars retire, they don’t get an honorary promotion. But they don’t necessarily like people to forget that they used to be senior to uppity three-stars.
Mr Graham acknowledges that Jokowi is inconsistent (‘plin-plan’, in his eyes) on economic policy but claims that Jokowi is single-mindedly focused on domestic issues. To the contrary, I believe that we should look for inconsistency here as well. That he is gauche in foreign settings is clear, but why assume that Jokowi has lost the ambition he showed early in his presidency for Indonesia to become a great power? This is a foreign policy goal.
A causal element in his endorsement of the ill-conceived Jakarta-Bandung rail project, very much a ‘mercusuar’ concept in my view, may be a belief that fast trains are symbolise great power status, even if America doesn’t have them.
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You know what else symbol of great power? Skyscrapers. The longer the taller the better. Funny that most of those are in Asia.
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