Jokowi) and Sixteen Years (Dwi-Windu) of Reformasi (1998-2014)
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東南亞研究中心 6RXWKHDVW$VLD5HVHDUFK&HQWUH Suhardiyoto HARYADI Former Reuters Fellow, Green Templeton College, Oxford and Peter CAREY Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Humanities University of Indonesia Indonesia’s Tryst with Destiny: The 2014 Presidential Elections, Haji Joko Widodo (Jokowi) and Sixteen Years (Dwi-Windu) of Reformasi (1998-2014) A Commentary Working Paper Series No. 155 July 2014 The Southeast Asia Research Centre (SEARC) of the City University of Hong Kong publishes SEARC Working Papers Series electronically © Copyright is held by the author or authors of the Working Paper. SEARC Working Papers cannot be republished, reprinted, or reproduced in any format without the permission of the author or authors. Note: The views expressed in each paper are those of the author or authors of the paper. They do not represent the views of the Southeast Asia Research Centre, its Management Committee, or the City University of Hong Kong. Southeast Asia Research Centre Management Committee Professor Mark R Thompson, Director Professor William Case Dr Bill Taylor Dr Nankyung Choi Dr Thomas Patton Editor of the SEARC Working Paper Series Professor Mark R Thompson Southeast Asia Research Centre The City University of Hong Kong 83 Tat Chee Avenue Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong SAR Tel: (852 3442 6330 Fax: (852) 3442 0103 http://www.cityu.edu.hk/searc Indonesia’s Tryst with Destiny: The 2014 Presidential Elections, Haji Joko Widodo (Jokowi) and Sixteen Years (Dwi-Windu) of Reformasi (1998-2014) A Commentary by Mr Suhardiyoto Haryadi (Former Reuters Fellow, Green Templeton College, Oxford) A commentary on an original presentation by Dr Peter Carey (Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Indonesia) at the City University Hong Kong (10 March 2014) Abstract The sixteen years of Reformasi (Reform) in Indonesia have seen remarkable political changes as the country has moved from Suharto’s autocratic ‘New Order’ (1966-98) to full-fledged democracy. Haji Joko Widodo (Jokowi’s) recent people-power victory over former Special Forces general, Prabowo Subianto, in the 9 July presidential elections, has underscored the scale of this change. Sixteen years marks an era in Javanese cosmology, each eight years completing a windu cycle, a doubly auspicious moment to take stock of Indonesia’s progress. The paper assesses the contribution of the four post-Suharto presidents to the reform process with the current incumbent, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (2004-14), being seen as the least effective. B.J. Habibie’s April 1999 decentralisation legislation and Megawati Sukarnoputri’s (2001-4) introduction of direct elections for political office-holders from city mayors to the president have enabled new figures such as Jokowi to emerge from the grassroots to challenge the traditional oligarchic establishment. Although the former Surakarta mayor’s election triumph marks a turning point, the challenges for his incoming administration are huge, not least in the public health and education fields where Indonesia’s record is amongst the worst in Southeast Asia. The last part of the paper looks at the ways in which these challenges might be met, beginning with losing candidate, Prabowo’s, constitutional court appeal designed to delegitimize the election process. It also sets Jokowi’s election in a broader sweep of Javanese history looking particularly at his appeal as a Javanese ‘Just King’ or Ratu Adil. Southeast Asia Research Centre Working Paper Series, No. 155, 2014 1 On Monday, 10 March 2014, my former Oxford tutor, Dr Peter Carey, made a presentation on the forthcoming Indonesian presidential election to the City University HK which was uploaded to youtube (available on the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4fivED0ukc).There was much of interest in Peter’s presentation, but perhaps also a few things that were left unsaid. Now that Jokowi-JK have been confirmed as the winners by the Electoral Commission (22 July 2014),i I will attempt to fill in some of the gaps in Peter’s presentation. As a former Indonesian journalist, I have been following Indonesian electoral politics since the dawn of the reformasi period in May 1998, and although no longer involved in the world of journalism, I continue to maintain a keen interest in the subject of Indonesian elections. Slide 1 The presentation commenced with a slide entitled ‘What is at Stake?’ The answer was partly technical – namely, the 9 April legislative elections would determine the electoral ‘threshold’ for the respective parties relating to the 25 percent of the constituency vote or 20 percent of the seats required for parties to nominate their own candidates for the 9 July presidential election; and partly historical – namely the importance of this moment in Indonesia post-independence history Southeast Asia Research Centre Working Paper Series, No. 155, 2014 2 as a potential watershed in determining the nation’s future especially given the emergence of new candidates from the local grassroots of whom the Indonesian President elect, former Surakarta mayor (in office, 2005-12) and Jakarta Governor (in office, 2012-14), Haji Joko Widodo (Jokowi, born 21 June 1961), is the most exceptional. There was an interesting remark made by Jokowi’s current running mate, former Vice-President, Jusuf Kalla (born 1942, in office, 2004-9), that to get elected he needed around 70 million votes, but to govern the country he only needed the telephone numbers of 500 key members of the Indonesian political, judicial and bureaucratic establishment – a small enough number to fit on his hand-phone’s memory chip!ii If true – and Kalla’s prediction of 70 million votes was almost spot oniii - this is a telling aside and could be said to reflect the solipsistic and self-regarding nature of the current Indonesian elite. The historical example of the British elite in June 1940 is telling here: namely, SS Brigadier-General Walther Schellenberg’s Sonderfahndungsliste G.B. (Special Search List G.B. = Great Britain), a list of 2,820 of prominent English and foreign nationals who would have been immediately arrested (and subsequently executed) had Hitler’s 1940 invasion plan for England been successful.iv In 1940, the population of the United Kingdom stood at just 48 million. So, if the Nazis deemed that they needed to get rid of nearly 3,000 individuals to tear the heart out of Britain’s resistance, one could imagine that a country like Indonesia, which has a population five times greater than the wartime UK, should have a political elite of at least 15,000. The fact that it has just three percent of that number – in Jusuf Kalla’s estimation – is a reflection of the huge distance the Republic still has to travel to develop an adequate pool of local and national leaders. This deficit in leadership is one of the principal challenges for the development of an effective democratic system in Indonesia. It is also one of the reasons why the country seems to be sleepwalking into its role as the seventh largest economy in the world by 2030 as predicted by the McKinsey Global Institute.v It has no sense of where it is going or what it wants to achieve as a nation. Southeast Asia Research Centre Working Paper Series, No. 155, 2014 3 Slide 2 Slide 2 attempted to summarise what was at stake in the current 2014 election, suggesting that the elections would determine the country’s leadership for the next five years (2014-19) and probably longer (2014-24) given the likelihood that a successful first-term president – witness the current incumbent Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY, born 1949; in office 2004-14) – would almost certainly seek a second five-year term. Secondly, it indicated that the new presidency might provide a long-term vision for the country, perhaps even one which would envisage how Indonesia might look at the time of its independence centenary in 2045. Thirdly, it underscored that a top agenda item would be prioritising the present fight against corruption given Indonesia’s current place as the 117th most corrupt country in the world out of 174.vi At the very least, the role and authority of the State Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) would be expected to be expanded. In this regard, it is significant that one of the two Southeast Asia Research Centre Working Paper Series, No. 155, 2014 4 presidential candidates, Jokowi, seriously considered the current KPK head, the Makassar-born Abraham Samad (born 1966), as his running mate. Fourthly, it indicated that any new administration would be expected to enact pro-poor policies in education and health. Finally, Indonesia’s competitiveness and culture of excellence would need to be developed if it was going to hold its own with its G-20 partners and become a developed country. Slide 3 Southeast Asia Research Centre Working Paper Series, No. 155, 2014 5 Slide 4 Slides 3-4 then reviewed the history of the first six years of Reformasi, the so-called ‘Reform’ period, looking in turn at the administrations of Bachruddin Jusuf Habibie (born 1936; in office, May 1998-October 1999), Abdurrahman Wahid (‘Gus Dur’) (1940-2009; in office, October 1999-July 2001) and Megawati Sukarnoputri (born 1947; in office 2001-4). The argument here, following that of Professor Rhenald Kasali of the Social Sciences Department of the University of Indonesia (UI), was that this was an exceptionally innovative period.vii Despite the truncated nature (517 days) of Habibie’s administration, some 57 laws were enacted (roughly one every ten days). viii These included two major decentralization bills devolving power from the centre to the 330+ (now 509) districts or kabupaten (April 1999) and one government legal revision (Peraturan Pengganti Undang-undang, Perpu) recognizing East Timor (Timor-Leste’s) independence following the UN-sponsored independence referendum (30 August 1999).