Barring a crisis or a power grab, Jakarta
looks like getting true reformasi
As the
night wore on after Indonesia’s 2014 presidential election, it looked more and
more like Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo and his running mate, Jusuf Kalla, had
pulled off a historic victory despite the fact that they were outspent,
out-generaled, faced their own organizational problems and were hit with a
ruthless mudslinging campaign.
That
probably is an indication of how much the nation of 240 million wants change.
With 90 percent of the vote in, Joko and the coalition headed by his Indonesian
Democratic Party of Struggle, or PDI-P, had won by a relatively comfortable
margin of 53.3 percent to 46.78 percent, according to quick count tallies. That
would mean a plurality of 7 million to 8 million votes. However, his opponent,
the 62-year-old former Gen. Prabowo Subianto, was refusing to concede, saying
he had his own unnamed quick count polls saying he had won, and asking his
supporters to protect the ballot boxes. The official tally won’t be available
until on or around July 22.
The big
worry appears to be keeping Prabowo in his stable. Many people in Jakarta were
worried that the mercurial former general might use his declaration of victory
and seek to establish his own administration although in past elections, the
quick count has proven accurate and reliable. Some local analysts were warning
that Prabowo might use his old Special Forces troops and the government’s
intelligence services might try to rig the vote count.
American
journalist Allan Nairn said earlier that he had “documentary evidence” that
Prabowo would try to rig the outcome. Prabowo claimed victory based on quick
counts conducted by pollsters hired by TVOne, a news station owned by one of
his party backers, the tycoon Aburizal Bakrie, who could face his own severe
headwinds from a corruption-free administration.
Nonetheless,
if Joko’s win does stand up, the meaning is dramatic. He has proven so far to
be arguably the cleanest politician the country has ever seen, first as mayor
of the city of Solo, and then as Jakarta governor. His own party, PDI-P, is
filled with about as many crooks as the rest of them. But the choice was stark.
In Prabowo, the voters had someone whose stated goal was to circumscribe
democracy and possibly take the country back to the authoritarian past of the
strongman Suharto, his one-time father-in-law who ruled for 31 years until
1998. He even adopted the safari suit and pillbox cap that Indonesia's original
strongman, Sukarno, favored long ago.
Although
Suharto was pushed from power 16 years ago, the way of doing business
established by his dictatorial and kleptocratic rule has remained in place
despite the early reformasi promise of the current president, Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono, who was elected first in 2004. That promise has since soured. The
country’s major institutions – the legislature, the judiciary, the police, the
military, the tax authority – all need a thorough housecleaning before
Indonesia can establish itself rightfully as a major Asian power. The
Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index ranks Indonesia 114th
in the world for corruption.
If he
means to clean up, Jokowi, as he is known, probably faces as big a job as Xi
Jinping in China, whose battles to put corrupt officials in jail have become
epic. Arrayed against Jokowi could be some of the strongest forces in
Indonesian society including companies like the Bakrie empire, which has
long-benefited from political deals. The
fact is that there is almost no facet of Indonesian life that is not in some
way tainted by hands out for bribes.
Bakrie,
the head of the opposition Golkar Party, managed to drive Sri Mulyani Indrawati
out of Indonesia and into the World Bank after she attempted, as Yudhoyono’s
Finance Minister, to force the coal and resources conglomerate to pay its taxes
and refused to countenance government bailouts at the onset of the global
financial crisis in 2008. Attitudes similar to Bakrie’s permeate much of the
country’s business community.
The
House of Representatives is regularly raided by the fearsome Corruption
Eradication Commission, known the KPK, to haul lawmakers off to trial. The KPK
so far has a 100 percent conviction rate in its own courts and it is rated one
of the country’s most corruption free institutions.
When
Yudhoyono came to power, he brought along with him a flock of young, bright
reformist lawmakers who depressingly turned out to be much like the rest of
Indonesia’s politicians. Anas Urbaningrum, the party leader, Andi Mallarangeng,
the sports minister, and others were ensnared in a huge scandal involving the
construction of a sports complex.
Yudhoyono,
who made common cause with Prabowo and Bakrie in the current election, is
rumored ot have done so because he may have received assurances that members of
his family would not face possible prosecution from his time in office.
The
win, if it stands up, represents remarkable chapter in Jokowi’s political
career that some compare with the come-from-nowhere rise of US President Barack
Obama. He was elected Jakarta’s governor in September 2012. At age 53, he is
one of the country’s newest faces. Beyond calling for a “new era for Indonesia
and the Indonesian people” and adding that the country wants “a better,
smarter, healthier and more prosperous Indonesia,” his policies remain pretty
much a blank slate. But neither his education nor his experience are very broad
in international terms. He was educated in local institutions, unlike Prabowo,
who spent the early part of his life overseas.
Joko
has told investors that he will pursue market-friendly policies and make
bureaucratic reform and infrastructure-building his priorities. But as far as
can be seen, he will remain fairly close to the economic nationalism that is
slowly squeezing down on foreign investment.
"Investors
should be given enough room to broaden their investments," Joko was quoted
by Reuters as telling a crowd of domestic and foreign investors. Beyond that,
he has remained vague on how he would accomplish infrastructure construction.
The current government, under the economic tutelage of Hatta Rajasa, who ran as
Prabowo’s vice president, two years ago precipitously stopped foreign bids to
modernize the country’s biggest port, and said the country could do it itself.
Multinational resource companies seeking oil and minerals are continuously
seeing their operations circumscribed.
Whether
Joko can assemble a team that will clean out decades of corruption remains to be seen. With Jokowi in charge,
the country is in for an interesting ride.
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