Hello friends!

I have been tinkering all week with this. I was supposed to send it yesterday, but truthfully I’m a bit in my feelings about the end of the Joko Widodo era. 

Firstly, it makes me feel very old. I first arrived in Indonesia the week he was inaugurated — what do you mean that was a decade ago!

Secondly, and more importantly, for the people I love the most it is a very difficult, confronting time. The only leader I can think of comparable is Barack Obama, who similarly came in on that wave of Hope and left with a more muddied reputation. Maybe my Anthony Albanese, though that happened on a much faster timeline. 

But, these beloved friends of mine are outliers and I should be very honest about that upfront. The sense of unease is not shared widely and Jokowi stands in extraordinarily good stead among the millions that voted for him twice. 

Right now, from the major road through the centre of the city to the backstreets of Jakarta’s suburbs banners blanket in gratitude for Jokowi’s service and wishing the best of luck to his successor Prabowo Subianto. 

I have nothing to say on what an in-coming Prabowo Subianto administration will look like. I have no idea. He has policies, he has a cabinet and he has a long CV. But I have only known a Jokowi-led Indonesia! Even after that long presidential campaign, I don’t feel like I really know much about a President Prabowo at all. 

Before we worry about all that: the ten years that was. 

Erin Cook

The First Term

Jokowi was boneka, a doll, a puppet. This wasn’t really his term it was simply PDI-P boss Megawati Sukarnoputri’s second. Mega and rival candidates alike had set that in stone. This story from the Jakarta Post published May 16, 2014, feels insane to read now, but is instructive. Upon securing the support of other parties, PDI-P opted for then-Jakarta governorJoko Widodo as candidate and he would do well to know it’s about the party, not him, Mega said: “You should remember that you are the party's official, with a function of implementing the party's programs and ideology.”

Then-party secretary-general Tjahjo Kumolo seemed to spot what was about to happen and quickly clarified that it was a message given to all party members and did not insinuate any sort of ‘deficiency,’ as the JakPo put it, in Jokowi. 

Challenger Prabowo Subianto had been talking up the prospects of a puppet-president and latched on to the commentary. It followed Jokowi into the early years of his presidency, undermining his leadership. 

I can’t pinpoint when this dissipated. It feels like that was the wisdom and then one day it wasn’t. 

Internationally, he was the small-town furniture salesman who had arrived to ‘save’ Indonesia from Prabowo and a return to the New Order days. He was a man of the people who had bootstrapped his way to the highest office and understood, innately, the mood of Indonesia. He was the candidate that looked forward and Prabowo was going backwards. 

This view was hard to challenge. The story is so immensely attractive and bends to the imagined Indonesia the world wants that it wasn’t until well into the second term that the foreign media narrative shifted, despite civil society sounding the alarm from 2014 on. 

The first term is littered with promises that never, really, eventuated. The country’s first officially sanctioned symposium into the mass killings of 1965-66 fizzled, calls to wade into a particularly heated crackdown on LGBT Indonesians went unheeded, and an inability to protect the country’s anti-corruption agency (KPK) foreshadowed the years ahead. Jokowi’s inaction during the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election, in which his former deputy governor Ahok ended up jailed over blasphemy, were viewed as disappointing by those who wanted to see stronger protections of ethnic and religious minorities in public life. Though, I suppose he was in a damned if you do/don’t position. He’s since clearly shed any hesitation about tipping scales. 

Still, he remained wildly popular. These are the concerns of the hyper-educated in the salons of Jakarta, not so much the lower socioeconomic classes that saw economic growth and reforms to bureaucracy make life a little bit easier. Caveat of course being that LGBT rights, reconciliation with the past and corruption all affect less well-off Indonesians just as much, if not more, as the elite. 

The Second Term

He was returned to power handily in 2019, with a wider margin on Prabowo than the previous run. I was (lightly) chided by an Indonesian journalist working for foreign media for not being sceptical enough of the president as he began his second term, and I think he was right because I was caught a little unawares. A public mea culpa, how embarrassing for me. 

After securing the win, Jokowi announced the Omnibus Job Creation package. It would, he said, pull back the red tape that has thus far inhibited economic growth in the country. For workers, it slashed severance pay, leave entitlements and made it much easier for them to be fired. Environmental protections were rolled back. 

It began working its way through the system in 2020 and organised labour, student groups and others in civil society did what they do best: took to the street en masse in one of the largest protest movements since 1998. The pandemic and social-distancing guidelines did little to mute these events and thousands were arrested over the year. It also saw the rise of a powerful new voice in Indonesian civil society — the Kpoppers. 

The government response to the pandemic itself is worthy of a quick look-in. In a 2021 report for ISEAS, Yanuar Nugroho and Sofie Shinta Syarief pointed at ‘grave failings’ by the administration, pointing to a very slow response in tracing, a slow vaccine roll-out and public communication issues. Worries about an economic bounce-back were persistent, though this seems to have corrected more recently. (A shrinking middle-class worry notwithstanding.)  

And then there’s Nusantara, the new capital announced in 2022. Economic pressures following the post-pandemic rebuild mean construction hasn’t exactly gone to plan for Jokowi — never mind that no one wants to live there — and Prabowo’s apparent disinterest makes its future even less certain. I’ve always believed Jokowi’s support of Prabowo was predicated, in part, on the successor continuing Nusantara and Prabowo’s boredom with the project is a sticking point between them. Nusantara either becomes a flourishing, futuristic capital or becomes an expensive outpost of Jakarta, destined to be reclaimed by the jungles of Kalimantan. Either way, it’s Jokowi’s legacy and he will shortly no longer have the power to decide its fate. 

Jokowi Starts Writing on the Wall

It’s in 2019 when things really turn, when the ‘democratic backslide’ talk began unabated. The usual post-election Constitutional Challenge by the loser came and went — and left eight dead. Jokowi was inaugurated and suddenly Prabowo Subianto was the defence minister and everyone who knew better went ‘oh, here we go.’ 

Jokowi was consolidating, a bit of talk about dampening the polarisation (another favoured buzzword of the period) and a lot of thoughtful analysis from Jakarta and abroad on the broad-tent as Indonesian politics’ natural state. So far, so good. 

As it did everywhere, things get a little weird during the pandemic. My people came close to purging a few states and inventing a new one for the NRL, Indonesia came close to breaking the constitution. Presidents are bound to two terms but, many argued, Jokowi had been effectively robbed by COVID and the full program voters asked for had been hamstrung. Third term? Third term, anyone?

Writing for Fulcrum in April 2022, Julia Lau distils this period — a would-be aberration if only everything else didn’t happen — beautifully. Economic pressures were high, everyone on the planet was in a feral mood and Jokowi himself seemed to prefer allies wade in rather than himself. 

What stands out to me from Lau, and which the editor at Fulcrum sensed when selecting it as the pull quote, is this line: “A third term for him as president is a non-starter, and if he has not clearly identified a successor, perhaps it is now time to consider how best he can be a kingmaker to a candidate who will preserve his legacy.”

And so it began. If you can’t run again, if the thought of that is a step too far for the electorate, the second best option is the son. I suppose. Historically, that hasn’t fared too well in the courts of old Europe either.

Jokowi flitted and flirted, though in retrospect I’m not sure the winks of allegiance to Ganjar Pranowo, himself a PDI-P heavy-hitter from Central Java, were ever genuine. Prabowo Subianto — the man Jokowi spent two elections telling the country was not fit to serve their interests — was the pick. The divining of much of this came, weirdly, from Instagram. Posts featuring Prabowo involved in government business far from the Defence Ministry would set off another round of commentary. Prabowo won, but so did the most cynical fortune tellers of Jakarta’s newsrooms. 

But how! How do you tell a few hundred million people that this is your guy without saying ‘this is my guy.’ Gibran Rakabuming Raka was serving as mayor of Solo, Central Java, with the blessing of dad, himself a former mayor of the city, and the PDI-P. I’m not particularly attuned with the local politics of Central Java but whenever I’ve asked friends from Solo if the city likes him the answer has been ‘well, he’s Jokowi’s son.’ (foreshadowing!)

Constitutional age limits prevented an easy nomination for Gibran as vice-president. He only turned 37 this month, and pre-last year would have had to be 40 to run. Gibran’s uncle was serving on the bench and agreed that, given Gibran’s track record in public service, the rules should be changed. The constitutional court is a real headache for me, a dilettante, so shall punt this off to Tim Lindsey and Simon Butt. 

This is an important hair to split, I think. The decision in itself is not one for concern. It makes sense, to me, in a country where the same big names from Reformasi still dominate, to switch it up and make it easier for young blood. The millennial generation is an enormous one and — like much of the world — it’s time to give them a go. It’s just a matter of whose blood it is. 

One thing that gets me here, now that the election is done and dusted, is how transparently everyone has arrived at Gibran. There’s no putting on airs that the furniture salesman’s son is, in his own right, a great leader in the making. One particularly blunt conversation I had recently in Nusa Tenggara Timur sticks. So, you love Jokowi, but do you like Gibran? Gibran is Jokowi’s son so will do what Jokowi says. Boneka? Yes. 

I’ve made much mileage out of the similarities between the Prabowo-Gibran ticket and what we’ve seen in the Philippines with Ferdinand Marcos Jr and Sara Duterte, but I think I may have done a disservice to Duterte. (Apologies to all Pinoy readers bristling) A split in Manila was seen as inevitable and has since come to pass. But Sara Duterte does stand on her own feet, with her father beside her. A split in Jakarta is also seen as inevitable, but I do not see Gibran being capable of — or even wanting to — standing straight. 

It’s a hell of a gambit for Jokowi. Families might always be rising and falling in America, but not with the same vertigo as in Indonesia. He’s leaving office with sparkling approval ratings, even after all that. But he does not have the party brain that has kept Megawati Sukarnoputri on top, nor has he cultivated the kind of elder statesman image that Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has. So what does he have today, on his last day? Approval ratings, a bumpy dynasty and an impending showdown with one of the most formidable figures in Indonesian political history to whom he has just handed the keys. 

And I’m probably wrong. Or a little bit right and a little bit wrong. Maybe, like so many of my friends in Jakarta who now say Mulyono or friends further afield quietly archiving Facebook profile photos from 2014, I was encouraged to be taken away by the romance of it all and then scolded for being disappointed in the reality. Jokowi told his people and the world that he was the hope, the one who would build Indonesia in the image Indonesians wanted and keep the old guard at the gates. Instead, it was a decade-long detour and the old guard shown in the back.    

Reading list:

This is a tricky one to compile. There is a lot of great stuff out there, but the best (the ‘best’) is yet to come as we get further away from the Jokowi years. So consider this a starter menu. 

Backsliding democracy mars Jokowi’s political legacy — Yerica Lai, The Jakarta Post

When Joko “Jokowi” Widodo entered national political stage in 2014, he was hailed as a beacon of hope and a democratic reformer, an outsider promising to fix a political system dominated by family dynasties and military elites. But now, as his second and final term as President comes to an end, critics say Jokowi has undermined the democratic norms he promised to uphold by manipulating the rule of law to advance his political ambitions, cracking down on dissent and weakening graft eradication efforts.

Jokowi broke the ‘Reformasi coalition’ — Edward Aspinall and Fauziah Mayangsari, New Mandala

One of the legacies Joko Widodo leaves Indonesia is a dramatically changed relationship between government and civil society. For the first decade and a half of the post-Suharto period, pro-democracy civil society groups and government constituted a rough-and-ready “Reformasi coalition” in which a constant push-and-pull between these two sides—sometimes cooperative, often conflictual—slowly moved forward a process of democratic reform and safeguarded reform achievements from counter-reformist elites.

A decade of Jokowi: Indonesia's democracy icon leaves illiberal legacy, critics say — Kate Lamb and Ananda Teresia, Reuters

In 2014, then presidential hopeful and outsider Joko Widodo attended packed campaigns with a white ribbon warning against election fraud tied around his head.

At the time Jokowi - as the president is known - symbolised democracy and change, embodying the hope of a better, cleaner Indonesia.

After two terms and a decade in power, he has left an indelible mark on the nation of 280 million, presiding over a period of strong economic growth and massive infrastructure development. But critics say his rule also has been marked by a rise in old-time patronage and dynastic politics, and the diminished integrity of courts and other state institutions.

Jokowi’s 10-year presidency: a tragedy for Indonesia’s democracy? — Endy Bayuni, Indonesia at Melbourne

How will President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo be remembered after his reign ends on October 20?

He could leave the political stage as a great statesman, the man who built many infrastructure projects to put the economy on a sustainable growth path, who launched many key social programs to improve the people’s prosperity, including a universal health care system, the man who raised Indonesia’s ranking to an upper-middle income country.

But because of his attempts to stay in power beyond the prescribed term, historians writing about him may not be so kind. They may see him as fitting Lord Acton’s description, in the quotation above, of a “great man”.

A few weeks ago over on the Refomasi podcast, Kevin O’Rourke and I chatted with James Guild. He’s an enormous brain who has spent this entire period studying Jokowi as the ‘infrastructure president.’ A must listen, I feel.

And a look ahead from Omong-Omong. Editorials from these guys are always scathing and a few times over the years I’ve thought, whoa, settle down. But then they were right. They were always proven right. 

Editorial: Insecure Prabowo Leads A Hopeless Indonesia

Having lost twice in presidential races to Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, and eventually serving under him as part of his cabinet, Prabowo Subianto’s confidence seems deeply fractured. Now, as he takes on the presidency, it’s clear he believes that whatever his predecessor said or did must have been correct, ignoring the millions of Indonesians—especially students—who urge him to take a different path. Prabowo may also feel indebted to Jokowi, believing that Jokowi’s endorsement and cawe-cawe helped him win the 2024 presidential election, further eroding his independence as a leader.