E39: Compromises, Equalizers & Dynasties

President Widodo set lofty goals when he took office in 2014 and many have yet to be achieved. Hoping to achieve them in his second term, Widodo’s newly-formed cabinet has raised serious questions as to whether those goals are attainable. The government coalition is super-sized and the make-up of cabinet is full of political accommodations and compromises.

How might Widodo grab opportunities from this situation? Could Prabowo be a reliable equalizer to help Widodo gain political influence over his own party? On the flip side, was the make-up of the cabinet part of an effort to gain support to amend the Constitution and return to New Order style elections? And are Widodo’s family members set to become the next dynasty? Join us with the ever-brilliant Djayadi Hanan from Lembaga Survey Indonesia.

Analysis of Widodo’s New Cabinet

Shawn: President Widodo announced his new cabinet on October 23, 2019. 34 ministers in total, along with four other important ministerial positions, including the Attorney General. President Widodo set lofty goals when he took office in 2014 and many of them have yet to be achieved. Along with that, come new challenges to Indonesia as he moves into his second term, particularly with political reforms, stagnant economic growth, human rights concerns and the looming demographic dividend, where the number of people of working age will be higher than the number of dependence. This is set to peak in 10 years or so from now and many more jobs will be needed to absorb that workforce.

Now, the cabinet in my opinion is not the best formula to achieve the goals that Widodo promised to deliver. His cabinet seems to be full of political accommodations and compromises, especially with this supersized political coalition now. How do you view the cabinet and what are the political signals or codes that we should pay attention to when trying to understand what Widodo’s second term may look like?

Djayadi: Well first of all, thank you for having me again. With regards to the new cabinet, you’re right. This is actually not a surprise to many and as you described before that the cabinet is not as ideal as many people would have wanted. In a brief description, my view is that this cabinet can be described in three words: disruption, continuity and stability. So trying to combine those three could be a very daunting challenge to the President.

Why am I saying that he’s trying to combine those three elements? Disruption means that he wanted to introduce new things inside his cabinet in order for him to achieve the three main things he has said better and faster, which is human resources, infrastructure and economic transformation as a whole.

In his second term, he set up the so-called “Indonesian Vision” which consists of five goals:

Continuing his infrastructure projects
Focusing on human resource development
Reforming the bureaucracy, as the bureaucracy is still the main problem in development
Eliminate all of the laws that can inhibit Indonesia’s transformation
Economic transformation in general

If you remember his promise in 2014, economic transformation is similar to having high economic growth, which at the time he aimed for around 7% of economic growth. But because of what’s been happening in the economy outside of Indonesia or global economic development, this achievement of 7% has not yet been achieved. Instead, what we are having now is more or less 5% of steady economic growth which is not enough for Indonesia.

Jokowi as the president is right to say that Indonesia needs at least 7% of economic growth to enable us to transform the economy from the so-called “lower-level middle income” type economy, which is experiencing a middle income trap against a “higher-level middle income” type economy. Without at least 7% of economic growth, it is impossible to do. Again, the goals are actually ambitious given the fact that he has a cabinet that is not as ideal as I have mentioned.

So to do that, he needs a team of so-called “disruption” in the way that Indonesia’s development has been done, in the way that the ministries have been working and in the way that the cabinets have been conducting approaches to problems.

Shawn: I think disruption is one of the key terms.

Djayadi: I think most people agree that we need that kind of disruption approach but when we tried to relay this idea to who is going to execute this approach, it comes down to only several of these ministries.

The most famous out of all of them are two key figures. Nadiem Makarim [founder of Go-Jek], who was appointed to a very important ministry [Ministry of Education] because of the agenda which is resource development. Nadiem Makarim is very well-known in Indonesia in a business that is disrupting a very important business model, which is transportation. Despite the fact that he’s very young, which can be a plus effect for this job, some people are still doubtful in his capability in understanding what are the real problems of Indonesian education in general. But I think, the person who is very experienced in creativity and innovation, we expect or hope that Nadiem Makarim can find a way to disrupt Indonesian bureaucracy or the Indonesian system of education in general in a good way, not in a bad way.

Another figure that you see who is also very young, although a bit older than Nadiem, is Wishnutama Kusubandio [Minister of Tourism & Creative Economy], which is a sign by the president to execute important programs in digital economy and creative industries that blends with tourism in Indonesia. This is one of the most promising fields for transforming the Indonesian economy in the future. So these two very young guys are the symbol of disruption.

The other addition to these two young men is another well-known figure, which is Erick Tohir [Minister of State-Owned Enterprises] who is well-known due to his close relations with the president and his capability of chairing the successful Asian Games, in which Indonesia became the host last year or so.

Shawn: He is replacing long-time Widodo loyalist Rini Soemarno as the Minister of State-Owned Enterprises.

Djayadi: Which is, as you know, State-Owned Enterprises (BUMN) have been the bulk of Jokowi’s infrastructure project because most of the infrastructure development have been executed by state-owned enterprises, especially in construction and healthcare programs.

Another person that could be an addition to this team of disruption is the very young entrepreneur [Bahlil Lahadalia] who is tasked for chairing BKPM, the Investment Board, which is also very important. So in a way, there are some young men who are assigned or tasked to disrupt Indonesian economy, education and infrastructure in general.

On the other hand, it seems that Jokowi feels that some parts of his job is to be in continuity with the previous job that he has done in the previous term. This is also a positive side to this cabinet. People like [Minister of Finance] Sri Mulyani who has always been able to maintain the stability of Indonesia’s economy during the first term. Then, you have also Basuki Hadimuljono, who is the Minister of Public Works and Public Housing. I think that is a good pick because Basuki is considered very successful in assisting Jokowi in building massive infrastructure projects.

Meanwhile, you also have a team of stability. Jokowi’s goals are, to some extent, for the right reasons. He would like to have security and political stability. Of course, if you are trying to move very quickly in economic and human resource development, you will need security as well as political stability. Otherwise, you will be busy with political and security problems, which means that you will never be able to achieve development in general.

Shawn: But just before you jump into that political and security issues, do you think those disruptors will be able to break through and make change? Especially since the Department of Education and Culture is very bureaucratic and very difficult to manage the curriculum since it is a massive nationwide curriculum. Can Nadiem make breakthroughs there and also, what about Erick Tohir as well?

Djayadi: True. That is the big question here because of two reasons since there are two challenges for these disruptors.

They need massive support from the bureaucracy while Jokowi himself in his inauguration speech told us very clearly that bureaucracy is still a major hurdle in Indonesia’s democracy so the first challenge for them is how to disrupt bureaucracy itself without having a good support in bureaucracy, then their disruption, innovation and creativity will only be just big ideas that cannot be executed. Those very people in bureaucracy are the ones that are going to execute the ideas, innovation, creativity, etc.

I think one of the key things here should be the Minister of Bureaucratic Reform. If you have disruptors on human resource and economic development then you will also need to have disruptors in bureaucratic reform. And we don’t have that. Why? Because the minister [of Bureaucratic Reform] that is supposed to be responsible for this is the former Minister of Home Affairs [Tjahjo Kumolo], who is an old guy who is not well-known for understanding the new types of challenges in the new generation very well. He is the kind of old guy who has experience from back in the Soeharto era so I don’t think he is a good pick for that.

It is definitely going to be a challenge. A challenge on how to provide within a bureaucracy, which means that we cannot expect the ministers to provide bureaucratic support then we have to expect from the president to provide that support himself. To go down and make sure that there is a real bureaucratic reform as fast as possible, especially in the area of human resource development. Otherwise, the disruption in human resource development will not happen.

Shawn: But he has great difficulty with bureaucratic reform. Do you think he can make a breakthrough? Especially since he has to step in and help these three or four ministers. Is he going to be able to make a breakthrough or will we be talking about the same thing five years from now?

Djayadi: I think he better be. He mentioned several months ago in front of the media that during his second term, he has no burden. What he meant by that is that he has no political burden, just like in the first term. The political burden for the president during the first term was that he had to foresee, for the first time, the possibility of him being re-elected so he had to make a lot of comprises and he had to be very careful in dealing with political elites and so on. Now, that burden is no longer there, which means that he can focus more on his priorities if that is really the case.

Next, the political burden is on the partisan support in the parliament. In 2014, for his first one and a half years during his first-term presidency, he didn’t have that until the second year during his first-term presidency. The political support is enough to support him in the parliament. But right now after the result of the presidential election was announced, he was able to gain the support. Five political parties that were supporting him during the presidential election came through [the threshold] within the parliament and all in all they have 60% more of the seats in parliament, which means that he already has political support and he no longer has political burden. Therefore, that provides him with political asset to be more aggressive, to be more decisive, to be more involved in order to make sure that the support for his ministers that are needed such as the bureaucracy reforms should be executed or provided.

But we don’t know whether it is going to happen or not because we have to wait and see until the latest development. One issue will be the possibility of his family, who is his son and his son-in-law to participate in regional elections, which can in a way complicate his way of achieving much in his second term.

Shawn: I definitely want to get into that. Just getting back to your point, you have the disruptors, you have the security side, which you mentioned and you also have the continuity. But can you explain some of the security side?

Djayadi: Yes, there are two things. You may see some old generals and even the main political opponent against the president during the election is also embraced in the team and they all have a security approach on their mind because of their background as a military guy.

So I think in terms of security, first all of the national surveys conducted by Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) confirmed that Indonesia has no problems in their domestic security issue, which means that domestic security has been a good factor for him [Jokowi] to move forward with his agenda for his cabinet. Of course, there are some kind of threat like terrorism or radicalism from inside and outside the country but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to sacrifice, for instance, people’s freedom and civil liberties for the sake of security and for the sake of achieving the economic and human resource goals of development, but this is still in question. Because there is a tendency if we look at the background of many of these ministers and their military background, the possibility of them is that they will have more of a security approach in dealing with people in general.

For the first time in our democratized era, the minister of religious affairs is filled by a military guy [(ret.) General Fachrul Razi].

Shawn: Usually it's NU or Muhammadiyah in that cabinet seat, isn't it?

Djayadi: Yes, it is usually given to NU or Muhammadiyah. Both because of the representation issue and also because their expertise issue or their meritocracy issue.

Shawn: And the appointment of the retired general now is more due to security issues, or what is the reason behind this?

Djayadi: We can see that for now because he is not an affiliate to NU. He is in affiliate to a smaller Islamic organization, called Mathla’ul Anwar based in Banten, which in one of the occasions was attended by [fmr. Minister of Security] Wiranto a few weeks ago where he got stabbed. Still in terms of the Islamic school of thought, they are part of the NU but it’s not considered as the NU affiliate usually. He is also not a clear member of the Muhammadiyah so as a representative, he is not NU nor is he Muhammadiyah but he is not a cleric either. He is not a religious expert. So what is the reason behind the appointment other than the possible thought that he was appointed because of his military background. There are arguments other there that this type of ministry is responsible for managing religious affairs in Indonesia in general are now dealing with the so-called fundamentalism, radicalism, intolerance and so on. I think there is a message there that the government would like to deal with issues of fundamentalism, radicalism and so on, with the kind of security approach, which is worrisome for some people.

We hope that the deputy minister that has just been appointed by the president can balance that. The current deputy minister is an expert and the representative for Islamic clerics in Indonesia. The point is that there is a possibility for the government to deal with problems in non-economic issues like extremism, radicalism, or security issues with more of a security approach.

Reasons for Prabowo’s Inclusion in the Cabinet

Shawn: Are there more generals in the cabinet now than the last one? Or is it about the same?

Djayadi: I think it is about the same but in different positions. There are two controversial positions we have now. The first one is what we just talked about which is the minister of religious affairs and the second one is about the minister of defense. Not because of post itself, but because of the political position of Prabowo who is the Jokowi’s nemesis for the last 10 years. The minister of defense is a very strategic position in the Indonesian Constitution because if the president and vice president can no longer do their duty then there will be a so-called triumvirate which consists of three ministers, the Minister of Defense, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Home Affairs, which will take charge of the duties of the president and vice president.

The question is how is the president going to deal with Prabowo in managing the cabinet. Of course, the president needs to evaluate them regularly. If, for instance, the evaluation is not good for Prabowo, what will be his position? Is he going to be fired or not? If he is fired, then there will be a very good reason for the public supporting Prabowo to have a stronger opposition against the government. Is it going to be a choice that must be taken by Jokowi? We don’t know. So aside from the security issues, there are also issues of coalition management, with some of the generals that are coming especially Prabowo.

Other generals like Luhut has been there and I think he is still considered as Jokowi’s closest ally. I think that’s why he is the Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs. Other generals, which is a police general, unlike an established democratic country like the US for instance, the police general is actually similar to the non-military personnel. But in here, although officially, the police are not part of the military but the way they work is similar to the military. So he is also considered as a security guy, who is overseeing all of the local governments in Indonesia with all the problems that they are experiencing. It is also a sign that the security approach will be one of the forefronts of this government, which is worrying for some people, especially those who are activists of civil liberties or civil rights. But we’ll see because there is a possibility of sacrificing civil liberties on behalf of economic and human resource development.

Shawn: On that point, the forces that made Widodo to be president in 2014 maybe the same forces that are “slowing him down” with economic growth and reform. Democracies can be messy, they can be inefficient, whereas now he needs to streamline everything. He needs to have economic policies that are strong to promote that growth, where it could be at the expense of human rights, public dissent and things like that since he needs to streamline it to get things moving. Especially with the bureaucracy and less criticism or dissent is also an issue.

On that point with Gerindra coming into the ruling coalition, a lot of critics locally and internationally said that they were astonished with Prabowo in the cabinet and that this is a big gamble by Widodo and that this is a big surprise for bringing Gerindra in the coalition. But in my opinion, it's not a surprise at all. Widodo and Prabowo had close communications in mid-2018 before Widodo announced his vice president candidate with the hope that Prabowo will not be running for presidency and that there could be one ticket that included Gerindra. Prabowo and Gerindra were interested in the offer but I think their demands are quite high so that didn’t work.

The communications continued again after the elections very closely and intensely along with Megawati and the other political parties so I don’t think it is a big surprise. I think you know better than I that in Indonesia, ideologies between Gerindra and PDIP are quite similar. I actually wrote a report earlier how there is very little polarization between Gerindra and PDIP because they both have very similar platforms even though both platforms are quite weak.

How much is the decision to bring Gerindra into the cabinet is related to the President’s own party PDIP of not always being fully supportive of Widodo? I can recall that the Gerindra party in parliament worked closely with the government in his first one and a half years of his administration. And I think you said it yourself that even as a member of the country’s largest political party which is PDIP, Widodo still has not have enough influence with the coalition to secure political policies in parliament. Is Gerindra in the coalition now to support Widodo as some sort of equalizer in parliament?

Djayadi: It could be one of that but I think there are several reasons. You’re right that this is not a surprise for Jokowi to have Prabowo inside his coalition in the sense that Jokowi needs to add at least one more political party to his former presidential election coalition. Then, that means he has three choices: Gerindra, Democrat, or National Mandate Party (PAN). For this reason, PDIP is a factor because PDIP is much more comfortable with Gerindra than with Democrats. With the Democrats, [the chairwoman of PDIP] Megawati has a long rivalry with Yudhoyono [chairman of Democrat]. With PAN, there are two problems. Firstly, the founder of PAN, Amien Rais has been a very harsh critic of Jokowi and I think offended a lot of people in Jokowi’s circle and PDIP’s circle. Secondly, PAN has been the political party during Yudhoyono’s and Jokowi’s first-term administration are considered unloyal coalition members. Due to those reasons, the best choice will be Gerindra, which is Prabowo.

On Jokowi’s side, it is true that Jokowi has earned more than 60% of partisan support of the parliament based on the political parties’ coalition during the election but in Indonesia’s parliament, the decision making process is not only based on the number of votes that is based on the number of seats that a coalition controls but they also have a “consensus” vote. In a consensus, the number of political parties who are supporting you will matter. If you only have five like how Jokowi has for the presidential election, that means the opponent has a coalition consisting of four political parties. In a presidential system like Indonesia, there is no guarantee that a member of the coalition will always be loyal to the president in all issues.

Actually, this is not unique to Indonesia. This is the characteristics of a multi-party presidential coalition in many countries such as, Latin America, South Korea and many more. So what that means is that Jokowi will need an extra coalition member. Not only five [in total], he needs at least six [in total] as a safety net in the case that one or two political parties inside his coalition cannot be loyal to him in certain issues. So adding Gerindra is meeting the need for Jokowi.

Additionally, in managing his coalition in a multi-party presidential system, there is the presidentialization of a political party. That means that a political party who is supporting the President, or even the political party that the President is under has the ability of being different or having a different view or position with the President, which means that he needs to make sure that does not happen. He needs to have a coalition in which he is not dependant too much to his own political parties. So here we have such a large political party in his coalition, which is PDIP and second to that is Golkar. What if Golkar and PDIP are in collusion with each other to go against him? So he needs a kind of equalizer, a kind of conflict management to maintain coalitions thus, Gerindra is important for Jokowi.

But on Prabowo side, I think there are two things. First, Prabowo has been running for president for 15 years, almost all of his political career has been a candidate so I think there are some psychological issues and logistical issues for him. So, being part of the government will be better for him. Second, his own political party [Gerindra] should not be too dependent on him anymore. In other words, Gerindra needs a political party consolidation especially approaching the 2024 presidential elections, which is going to be another watershed election in Indonesia.

Shawn: Why so?

Djayadi: Because the biggest one is that 2024 election will be the mark of real transformation or transition of national leadership in Indonesia to new generations of national leadership.

Shawn: So this is coming from 1998 and finally going to be concluded in 2024.

Djayadi: Yes. Jokowi is a kind of new leadership but the team that is surrounding him are still transition figures. The figures who are experiencing authoritarian era and also experiencing from the authoritarian era to the reform or the new democratization era but in 2024, there will be a kind of cut off between the transitional generation of national level leadership to the new one. The new one means the millennial generation of Indonesian national leadership. So it is going to be a watershed, which means all political parties must be really prepared for that including Gerindra.

What will they need for [the 2024 election]? They will need a lot of access to political power, access to logistical resources, and so on. Both at a national and at a local level. [The new generation of national leadership will] mean being part of the government in the Indonesian way will be much more meaningful and beneficial for Gerindra. So, to a great extent, this is meeting the needs of Prabowo and his own political party, and the needs of Jokowi as well as PDIP. As a result, they can achieve it in one coalition or in other words, a strange bedfellow but that’s what happens in Indonesia.

Shawn: I think if you look at it from a distance, it looks like a strange bedfellows, but they are very natural partners. It is a perfect. It’s not surprising that they are together and it makes a lot of sense politically.

Djayadi: One of the factors that is affecting that, as you said, there are no big obstacles for different political parties in Indonesia to be in coalition with each other despite the fact that they are in opposition with one another in the previous election, for example. Why? Because there is no political party platform, there is no political party ideology that stands in the way of them. In that sense, it means that everything is possible as long as you personally can agree on those matters. So, you can say that anything goes. As terms of political science would say, it’s called as promiscuous types of coalition. Anything goes.

Shawn: Even if we look at the Coordinating Minister of Human Rights and Security, Mr. Mahfud MD, he was on Prabowo’s campaign’s success team but he can transition to Widodo’s camp. It’s about the personality, it’s about the relationships…

Djayadi: He was about to be the vice president for Jokowi! Can you imagine that? The campaign manager or the chairman of Jokowi’s opponent which is then requested or vetted to be the vice president and now he is one of the most important ministers, coordinating minister of security and law.

Shawn: I think it is important to re-emphasize your point that many people forget that Ma’ruf Amin was not Jokowi’s first choice for vice president when he already decided it was Mahfud MD, but unfortunately for Mahfud MD the political forces in the political parties were against that because he could easily run for president in 2024. He is also not a loyal member of PKB according to the chairman [Muhaimin Iskandar] and for many other reasons where Ma’ruf Amin is the perfect candidate to be VP when going in to this watershed election or this change in election coming in 2024. Maruf is beatable in 2024 even if he tried to run. It is very interesting how Mahfud MD could be the opponent’s success team and could be a Vice Presidential candidate and then be coordinating minister. That’s how things work in Indonesian politics.

Constitutional Amendments Could Bring Back New Order Style Elections

On that point, with Prabowo coming in, I know he met with all the coalition leaders especially Megawati, the chairwoman of PDIP in the past several weeks. How influential was their deal back in 2009, the Batu Tulis Deal, where Gerindra supported Megawati for president in 2009 and Gerindra was the vice presidential candidate. Then, in 2014, PDIP was supposed to support Prabowo for president which she did not since she supported Jokowi in this case. Is there any type of deal now between Megawati, Prabowo of the parties for 2024 or otherwise? Perhaps with her daughter, Puan [Maharani] who is now the Speaker of the Upper House, the MPR.

Djayadi: We, the observers, suspect that one of the deals was about the amendment of the Constitution. That is one of the important deals. This has been initiated by PDIP for a long time now. There might be two reasons. First, they might truly believe that we need the so-called National Development Planning [GBHN] similar in the New Order Era. They truly believe that they wanted to have that because academics and political observers have been debating about it. I myself do not agree with that, but that is one possibility.

Another possibility is a little more tricky. It is more of a political trick that the amendment is promised to be limited to insert the provision regarding the National Guidelines of Indonesian Development in general but actually once you enter the amendment, anything can happen including to reverse back the Indonesian Constitution such as the presidential election back to the old era in which the president is no longer elected by the popular vote.

Shawn: Which it used to be until 2004.

Djayadi: Correct. Logically speaking, it can be very beneficial to some elites. Some elites are aspiring to be the president but they know under the current system since the one who has the say is the people then some politicians are not a good presidential candidate in the eyes of the public. So, to go back to the old system where only the MPR members decide who is going to be beneficial for some of these people. Including, maybe, some political parties like Gerindra or in PDIP. But again, these are all speculations and allegations or things like that but I think it is logical. So, that’s why I think it could be part of the deal but remember, you mentioned that the old deal in Batu Tulis between Megawati and Prabowo, I think those are only promises to support each other to make the deal nicer.

But I think, other than the amendment to the Constitution, there is another possibility that PDIP and Jokowi probably truly believe that they need to have a kind of national reconciliation with Prabowo because they believe that Prabowo has been the representative of half of Indonesians polarized because of the presidential election. That is why they need to bring him into the coalition for them to have a symbol of real reconciliation to ease Prabowo and his supporters. To be part of Indonesia as a family again.

There is another concrete issue I believe that during the last presidential election, Prabowo has been surrounded by the so-called more conservative groups - religiously and non-religiously and now they want Prabowo to go back to the center by bringing him into the coalition. They can drag him back to the middle and separate him from the groups. Those groups can be considered the radical groups - non-Indonesian unitary state groups and so on.

So by bringing Prabowo in, they have the chance to moderate some part of Indonesian voters or society in general and at the same time, they can also identify who the real anti-Indonesian groups are. That factor I think is also part of the equation when bringing Prabowo inside the coalition.

Shawn: Just stepping back into your point about the State Policy Guidelines, the so-called GBHN. The major parties support it - it began with PDIP, Gerindra, Golkar, NasDem, I think PKB does not at this point. I think it is really important for our listeners to understand and to follow this because this is an important step if they would like to amend the constitution which eventually, as you said, could open the door to make the Upper House, the MPR, the highest institution in the land.

What do you see happening in the next House session? Do you see it moving forward? How long will it actually take for that to happen, for example? Do you see the President supporting that? It would be quite ironic if this is conducted and happened at the time where the democratic elections are what actually brought President Widodo to the office to begin with and it’ll be ironic if it is to be removed during his time. What is going to happen to the amendment, you think?

Djayadi: I think the chairman of the MPR, Bambang Soesatyo who is going to be the presiding officer responsible for amending the constitution, has said that this amendment issue will be very controversial among the public, so we need to be very careful and I think it is not there yet. It’s there on the possible agenda but I think it is not being processed yet and to process it with the amendment, you will need the initiation or proposal by at least a third of the DPR members and then agreed by the two-third DPR members to be processed. After that, they will gather amongst the DPR and the Senate, which is the DPD and they will start the deliberation for the session for that. It is actually a long way to go.

But I think they many of these political parties know that this issue is very controversial to the public so you actually have to look at what is the political intention behind their agreement to say that, yes I do agree to amend the constitution.

This deal to amend the constitution has started very concretely in early September when the DPR revised the law on the structure and composition of the legislature at the national and local level. The issue is the leaders of the MPR, or the Indonesian People’s Consultative Assembly. According to the law at the time, the MPR leadership will be decided based on the voting or based on the package proposed by coalition or opposition.

I think there was a lobby among them to make the MPR give all the political parties and the senate positions in leadership, which means that everyone got the cut of the cake. Then, they proceeded with revising the law on the structure and composition. They changed the provision on that leadership of MPR and now we have every political party with a chairmanship or vice chairmanship in the MPR.

Part of the deal, I think is that PDIP strongly support the change of the law of the article on the leadership of the MPR in exchange for them to promise to support PDIP in amending the constitution. I think that because of that exchange, most of the political parties agreed that they say they support the amendment or the limited amendment in their term.

The question is whether they are going to be committed to that promise. It is still a big question. Bambang Soesatyo (Golkar), for instance, who is the Chairman of MPR now based on the compromise and he’s from Golkar. I think he is also asked by probably PDIP to make the promise as Chairman of MPR, he will be supported by PDIP and other political parties as long as he promised to proceed with this amendment. And then, he said yes. But there is no binding agreement or time limit. Is it going to be in one year or two years or until the end of the term in MPR, it is not clear.

The one that is very clear that the amendment to the constitution is very controversial among the public. I don’t think that they will dare to ignore the public.

Shawn: So they may not ignore the public in a similar way that they did with the KPK law?

Djayadi: I think because they learned the hard way. But I think they got one-step win because the law, whether or not we like it, that has become the law. Now, the public is trying to reverse that back by pressing the president to release or enact the so-called government regulation in lieu of law or Perpu in Indonesian. Otherwise, I think if this demand is not being supported by massive public protests, I don’t think the government will think it over.

Shawn: It seems that they might be able to get away with the KPK Law going forward.

Djayadi: Even if they get away with it, we still need to wait and see. I’m thinking that if they can get away with the Anti-Corruption Agency Law [KPK Law], I think there will always be reason for the public to protest in the streets and when you have public going to the streets, anything can happen.

Shawn: Can the President] issue the Perpu at any time?

Djayadi: At any time. It is now law without being signed by him [the President]. I think the draft of the Perpu is there with several versions and he just needs to decide on that and sign it. I think, of course, the political parties will have a negative response to that. But I think if you are the president, you have to think which one is better for you. To manage and control the political elites’ negative reaction or to manage and control the negative reactions from the public. Which one is more worth it for you? Which one is much more doable for you?

I think in Indonesia’s situation, managing and controlling the negative reactions from the political elites will be much more doable compared to managing the reactions from the public because look at what happened in the rally after the enactment of the revision of the KPK Law. Even six people died and many injured. Many properties damaged and so on. And it potentially harms the civil liberties and civil rights of Indonesia, which will not be good for the government in general.

Shawn: But isn’t it interesting though that the Widodo government supported the amendments to the KPK Law before it was passed? It was done very quickly with parliament and that these amendments will also have to have the joint agreement between the parliament and the government. Am I correct?

Djayadi: Yes.

Shawn: So, it was supported by the government but then now the president doesn’t sign it because of the public protests. We’ll have to see what happens but in fact, one of your most recent LSI surveys show that 70% of participants in the survey believe that the amendments will weaken the KPK, the Anti-Graft Institution.

Djayadi: Right, and the true substance of the revision to the KPK Law is “actually you don’t need the KPK right now, just leave the corruption issues to the police and the prosecutors”. Just use the ordinary enforcement, you don’t need the KPK. KPK is needed because corruption is considered extraordinary crimes and extraordinary crimes need extraordinary body. When the [nature] of that extraordinary-ness of the KPK is no longer there, so you don’t have a reason to have the KPK anymore.

One of the extraordinary measures that the KPK has that gives the teeth to the KPK’s work is the power to wiretap but now that power is still there, but you have to get permission from the so-called supervisory body of the KPK. It is a written permission from the KPK. Is there any guarantee that you are my supervisor and I’m asking you to wiretap somebody else and that somebody else is your friend or relative? Are you going to leak it to them or not?

Shawn: The KPK has become the nation’s most trusted institution.

Djayadi: Yes. Until October 2019, the KPK and the President still got around 70% of trust from the public while the Indonesian DPR [parliament] got only 40%. The worst since 1999.

A New Widodo Dynasty?

Shawn: Jokowi came into office in 2014 as a political outsider fighting against the elites and political dynasties. He now has a large coalition and a very weak opposition. He has many political accommodations in his new cabinet. His son now is running for Mayor of Solo, his former political position. His son-in-law is also running for mayor of Medan. I’m sure there are other instances but both are being fast-tracked, particularly his son through the PDIP party.

Widodo appears to be planning for a future where people thought that he wouldn’t be doing that. Perhaps a political future for his family. Is a new dynasty forming or is this family members just jumping at an opportunity?

Djayadi: Can be both but this is what makes me wonder. Jokowi ran into politics as the man of the people, man of hope. In that way, we and many people consider him as an extraordinary politician or an unusual politician but if he really allows his son and his son-in-law to run for mayorship in Medan and in Solo then this belief that Jokowi is an unordinary politician is no longer there. If he allows his son and his son-in-law then we’ll just consider him like any other politician. What does a politician do? They jump into any chances that they got, whatever opportunity that they got. So as a president, it could be a good enabling factor for your family to get a political position. Why prevent that? Just let it go. So that is what the politicians do. So this is a test of leadership for Jokowi and a test of commitment of him. As you said, he committed that he is not going to have a burden to prepare for his political career for his family members but if his son and his son-in-law are truly running for mayorship then that expectation will no longer be in our mind.

In my view, of course it is his right for anybody to run for political positions regardless if you are the son of the President or not. It is by Indonesian law a right. It is the right of Gibran or Bobby to run for mayorship of Solo and Medan. But I think if Jokowi would like to have no political burden during his second-term, he should prevent them to run now. That is my view. Why is that? Because a political burden can mean that you don’t have to be re-elected but it also means that you don’t have the burden from your family. For instance, if Gibran is elected as the mayor isn’t that a burden for Jokowi? Anything can happen.

Shawn: And the elections are in 2020.

Djayadi: It is! Then 2020-2024 [election] is four years. These are very important years for Jokowi to finish up all of his promises in the second-term. What if something happens to Gibran during his mayorship? Whether he has the intention to do it or being set up by others to be involved in scandals, corruption and things like that, isn’t that going to be a problem for the President? That’s going to be a problem, right?

Additionally, running for mayorship for Gibran and Bobby is not good for themselves because what is the reason for Gibran to be fast-tracked to be nominee for PDIP? The answer is because he is the son of the president, right? And you know that in Solo, PDIP has already decided that at least there is already somebody to be nominated other than Gibran. And that somebody now is being put aside. Why is that? Because there is the son of the president to run. So if you are Gibran, then people will say what are you? What will you bring to the table? Nothing, right? You just rely on the position of your father. When he is elected, what is the reason for him to be elected? Because he was a successful businessman? Not yet, right? The reason is only because he is the son of the president.

Even worse, if he lost then that’ll be a problem for the president again. So I think there are too many negative things in this. Not to mention the one in Medan. So I think to prevent the view and to prevent the possibility of complications for Jokowi himself in running the presidency, I think it is better to ask the family to at least postpone the intention or the will to participate or to be involved in the elections of any political positions. Both at a national and at a local level.

Shawn: We have to watch and see what happens, Last point, is there anything we should be looking out for in the near future that I haven’t covered or what comes to mind from now until the end of the year for some of our listeners to be aware of?

Djayadi: I think the one that is lacking now is public support. Comparatively speaking, when SBY was President coming to his second-term during a similar time period as now, the public support or the approval rating of SBY at the time was around 84%-85% while Jokowi only has around 60%-70%. While Jokowi has been a very good president, right? The Man of the people but approaching his second-term, he should be having higher approval rating than 67%. What does that mean? That means there is a tendency of public support to decrease in his second-term.

Now, it’ll be interesting to watch what is his take on this public support. Is it going to be that it is no longer important for him because he is no longer running for the next election? Or is he still thinking that it is important for him? I’m still hoping that he thinks that public support is still important because it is always good to have a going-to-the-public strategy, which means going to the public if there is a problem with the political parties. You will not use that strategy to be successful if the public does not support you so I think public support will be an important issue to watch.

The issue of the amendment of the law in the KPK is one of the important issues here. So how he deals with this Perpu, with this demand for him to reverse the revision of the law will be important for the public.

Shawn: That’s interesting. We’ll have to see moving forward. Dr. Djayadi Hanan, Executive Director of Lembaga Survei Indonesia, LSI and lecturer and Director of Political Science Research at Paramadina University in Jakarta. Thank you so much for breaking down the political code in Indonesia with the Djayadi “supercomputer”.

Djayadi: Thank you again. I hope that helps for your audience, especially the non-Indonesian audience.

Episode Description

Podcast hosts: Shawn & Tanita

Email:info@indonesiaindepth.com

Twitter: @IndoIndepth

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/shawn-corrigan/

We are also available on Spotify, iTunes, Soundcloud, Google Music and other podcast players!

Music and sound effects licensed.