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For Indonesia's new president, winning was just the beginning. Joko Widodo will face a myriad of political issues, including narrowing the wealth gap and providing affordable healthcare, analyst Gregory Poling tells DW.
Indonesia's president elect, Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, is still waiting for a decision from the Constitutional Court on an appeal filed by his electoral opponent, ex-general Prabowo Subianto, who claimed the July 9 presidential election results were massively rigged. But that's just the first of many challenges awaiting the future president: a slowing economy, red tape, and resistance to reform are but a few of the issues facing Jokowi.
In addition, the 53-year-old Jakarta governor will also have to deal with a hostile parliament, given that most of its members are aligned with the losing candidate. Jokowi is the country's first president to not come from the military or political elite, and as such many are questioning his ability to lead, claiming that Megawati Sukarnoputri, the leader of Jokowi's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), is his puppet master.
However, Gregory Poling, a Southeast Asia expert at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, says in a DW interview that while Megawati might insist she is the real power behind the throne, Jokowi is not her puppet as the PDI-P and Megawati need Jokowi more than he needs them.
DW: Jokowi is the country's first president to come from outside the political and military elite, what are the main political challenges awaiting him?
Gregory Poling: The first, and perhaps most impactful, challenge will be building a governing coalition. Jokowi's outsider credentials make him appealing to the electorate, but they also means that he lacks the political and patronage network that other national politicians in Indonesia enjoy.
In addition, he repeatedly promised on the campaign trail that he would build his cabinet based solely on merit. If he sticks to that pledge, then it will reduce the options he has to attract parties to his coalition, since awarding prime spots in ministries had traditionally been the number one inducement to support a president.
Given that the opposition has a majority in parliament, how will this undermine Jokowi's efforts to push for big reforms?
How large an impediment the Gerindra-led coalition turns out to be will depend on whether or not it can stay together. All the parties that supported Prabowo pledged that they would maintain a coalition for five years, whether or not he won, but that is clearly already starting to crack.
Top officials in Golkar, the Democratic Party, and the United Development Party have all signaled that they would prefer to jump ship and join Jokowi. Golkar, in particular, seems poised to oust chairman Aburizal Bakrie later this year and replace him with a leader more inclined to switch allegiances to Jokowi.
Of course, if Prabowo can hold onto at least the majority of his coalition, then he will be in a position to be a thorn in Jokowi's side. Outgoing President Yudhoyono has been constantly plagued by an obstructionist parliament, and his own coalition partners have often been the worst offenders.
Some have painted PDI-P leader Megawati as Jokowi's puppet master. What is your view on this?
I think anyone other than Jokowi and Megawati who claim to know exactly the nature of their relationship is probably deluding themselves. One thing that seems clear to me is that while Jokowi might be deferential in public, and Megawati might insist that she, as the party leader, is the real power behind the throne, he is not her puppet.
Jokowi's popularity forced Megawati's hand in nominating him for president against her initial wishes, and it was he that won the election, not the PDI-P, which had such a disappointing showing in the April legislative elections.
Many PDI-P cadres are certainly loyal to both Puan Maharani, daughter of the former president, and Megawati. But outside the party loyalists, they are both rather unpopular. When you get right down to it, the PDI-P, and Megawati, need Jokowi more than he needs them. In the end, there will be compromises, but that fact will give the president the upper hand.
What will Jokowi have to do to tackle the widespread problem of corruption?
To be honest, corruption in Indonesia is not something that a single person, even the president, can tackle in one or two terms. The best Jokowi can do, as he did as governor of Jakarta, is to try his best to de-incentivize official corruption and try to crack the public narrative that this is a natural, unavoidable fact of life.
His tendencies in Jakarta to make personal, public spot checks of government offices, take officials to task, and replace them when necessary, will prove useful as president. But the real, long-term fight against corruption will still rely on institutions, not a single president. To that end, the best thing he can do will likely be to support the Corruption Eradication Commission, and make sure that no one, including members of his own coalition, are protected from investigation and prosecution.
Around half of Indonesia's population of 250 million people is poor, what measures need to be implemented to narrow the wealth gap?
The number one reform that Jokowi should implement to narrow the wealth gap is to reverse the disastrous revisions the Yudhoyono administration has made to the national curriculum. If Indonesian children are to be lifted out of poverty over the long-term, they must be raised to compete in a modern globalized world, not prevented from studying science, social studies, and English in primary school.
Healthcare will be the number two priority, and Jokowi as governor has already proven himself a champion of universal, affordable healthcare for the poor. Beyond those two, the best thing the government can do is make the country as a whole more economically competitive.
And the most critical step on that road is to begin addressing Indonesia's woefully inadequate infrastructure, funding for which will require the political will to reduce if not eliminate the costly public fuel subsidies. These are all major challenges.
Analysts often speak of persistent weaknesses in the economy that threaten growth. Many fear that Jokowi may follow a more nationalistic approach in his economic policy. What is your view on this?
All politicians in Indonesia are nationalists to one degree or another - protectionism pays on the campaign trail and is deeply ingrained in the national psyche. Jokowi is no different. But he has also proven himself a pragmatist, and the markets clearly welcomed his victory over Prabowo for a reason. Investing in infrastructure is the number one thing he will need to do for Indonesia's long-term economic growth.
More immediately, he will need to withstand pressures from the most protectionist voices in his coalition. He will likely be unable and unwilling to roll back the recent protectionist moves of the Yudhoyono administration, such as the ban on unprocessed mineral ore exports.
But he has also said he would not cancel investors' contracts and would prefer to renegotiate them once they expire. Holding to that commitment will be vital, as one of the biggest deterrents to investment in Indonesia is the perception that there is not sanctity of contracts.
Many people have set high expectations on Jokowi. How important will it be for him to manage those expectations in the early weeks and months?
Jokowi, much like US President Barack Obama in his first term, is probably fated to disappoint his most ardent supporters. That is just what happens when a new type of politician rides to power in a campaign that bills him as a transformative leader. The important thing for Jokowi will be to show steady, albeit small, progress in important areas - healthcare, education, corruption busting, cutting bureaucratic red tape - while tamping down expectations to a more realistic level.
Gregory Poling is a fellow with the Sumitro Chair for Southeast Asia Studies at the Washington-based Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS).
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