How Jokowi Conquered Indonesian Politics

On December 2, 2016, dressed in a simple black peci, white shirt, and black trousers, plus a blue umbrella for the rain, Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo strolled out of the presidential palace and toward the waiting crowd. Even with the security cordon around him, it was hard not to feel nervous.

The crowd dressed in white prayer robes was massive – some 500,000 to 700,000 – spilling out of Merdeka Square and down Jakarta’s arterial roads. Its organizers were no friends of Jokowi. The 212 Movement, named after the protest’s date, was calling for the arrest and imprisonment of Jokowi’s close ally, the governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja “Ahok” Purnama, on charges of blasphemy.

The government viewed the demonstration nervously. Protests on November 4 – which attracted some 100,000 people – had turned violent. As the second protest approached, Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal, and Security Affairs Wiranto, meeting a group of inter-faith leaders, pointedly played footage of the bloody 1998 riots that brought down the Suharto dictatorship after over three decades of rule. Having commanded Indonesia’s military at the time, Wiranto’s warning carried weight.

Until the very last moment many thought Jokowi would dodge the protest on his doorstep. Instead, he walked out to join the crowd in afternoon prayers. After the prayers finished, Jokowi scrambled through the press of bodies and onto the stage. Once there he briefly thanked the crowd for their prayers and orderliness. As he left, some in the crowd cried for the immediate arrest of Ahok, already under police investigation. But, as the day drew on the demonstrators slowly dispersed with no violence reported.

Four days later the Indonesia’s Attorney-General’s Office filed blasphemy charges against Ahok. And four months later, in April 2017, Rizieq Shihab, one of the most radical forces behind the protests, fled to Saudi Arabia, dodging police summons. It was alleged he had breached pornography laws by exchanging salacious texts with a woman who, coincidentally, had been arrested before dawn on December 2 on murky treason charges.

There are many dramatic moments in Jokowi’s nearly two-decade long political career, but his handling of the 212 Movement best encapsulates many aspects of his leadership: boldness and a capacity to surprise allies and critics alike, enormous faith in his own ability to connect with the Indonesian masses and shape events, an ability to tack to the political wind without being seen as a mere opportunist, and a willingness to tame Indonesia’s darker political forces through a mix of concession and coercive state power.

From Liberal Darling to Suharto 2.0: Jokowi's Evolution

Jokowi is due to step down from the presidency on October 20. Succeeding him will be Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto. In 2014, when Jokowi began his first term, few would have predicted it would end like this. Prabowo, who won the 2024 election in no small part thanks to Jokowi’s tacit support, ran two rancorous campaigns for the presidency against Jokowi in 2014 and 2019.

The men seemed antitheses of each other. Prabowo represented the old authoritarian Indonesia – son-in-law of Suharto, former special forces general accused of human rights violations, descendent of political aristocracy, and brother to an oligarch. Jokowi was a local boy made good in business who, following the post-Suharto democratization, rose to become mayor of Surakarta, then governor of Jakarta, and finally president.

Many who flocked to Jokowi as an icon of reform feel betrayed. The president seems to have changed from a clean outsider to a scheming insider and petty dynast. His son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, will serve as Prabowo’s vice president. Meanwhile, his younger son, Kaesang Pangarep, heads a small political party and son-in-law Bobby Nasution looks likely to become next governor of North Sumatra. To enable these ambitions the courts have been politicized – Gibran could only run thanks to a dubious last minute ruling adjusting candidate age limits from a Constitutional Court led by Jokowi’s brother-in-law.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Party leaders disinclined to support Prabowo found themselves threatened with corruption investigations, or had subordinates convicted. State power was used to put a finger on the scales in the 2024 presidential election in ways unprecedented since the 1998 democratization. State welfare packages were distributed at political events by parties supporting Prabowo’s bid. Local leaders who looked to be leaning the wrong way found themselves called upon by the police instructing them to support Prabowo, or face the consequences.

How do we explain this apparent transformation of Jokowi? One explanation is the classic story that power corrupts. Another might focus on the structural constraints of Indonesian politics, which pushed Jokowi to compromise and transform himself in order to govern effectively. The last explanation is to say that the Western analysts and Indonesian liberals who championed Jokowi early on were simply wish-casting; Jokowi was always focused on development, with limited concern for issues of democracy or human rights.

The early excitement around Jokowi stemmed from his ability to combine good governance with the perception that he was the champion of the wong cilik – the little people. Jokowi grew up in a riverside slum in Surakarta and claims that his family was evicted four times as a child. Whether campaigning or governing he made his signature blusukan, impromptu site visits to chat to locals about their issues and the progress of government projects. Bureaucrats – worried their boss might drop in to find them taking a long lunch or asking for bribes – shaped up.

Another much-cited example of his approach was how early in his first term as mayor he spent months convincing street vendors in a park to relocate to a new area – rather than simply having the police clear them out.

Jokowi also showed a talent for delivery. Despite only serving as governor of Jakarta for two years, he oversaw the start of construction for the Jakarta MRT – a project that had been first mooted in 1985. People loved him for it. In 2010 he was re-elected as mayor of Surakarta with 90.9 percent of the vote, and as governor of Jakarta he became the most popular politician in the country.

But there was also always a touch of spin. While Jokowi was not from the elite, there were hints his childhood might not have been as hardscrabble as he liked to claim. His family had enough resources to see him born in a hospital, put him through school, and send him to university before he eventually joined his uncle’s furniture company. All of this suggests more means than the average Indonesian.

After setting up his own business he found success and traveled internationally as a wealthy entrepreneur. In 2010, around the time he was beginning to attract national attention, his wealth was estimated at $1.5 million.

As Jokowi’s star rose, a press pack feverishly reported his every blusukan, and the man consciously cultivated his legend. “We go to the poor people, to the riverbank for example, and this is sexy for the media. If you interview in the office or shoot television footage in the office it is not sexy,” he slyly admitted to a journalist in 2014.

Just a few months after becoming governor he was using TV coverage to hone his national appeal based less on policy than image. As he would later explain “My program [for the presidential campaign] was: I am simple, polite, and honest.” But, behind this was also clearly an increasingly vaulting ambition.

Here the story of ambition – and the truism that power corrupts – suggests itself. One figure who worked with Jokowi for a number of years, but has since become a critic, suggested a change around 2019 after Jokowi won re-election. Jokowi, they claim, became increasingly impatient and closed off to advice. He would be far from the first leader to succumb to the vanity of office. Gone were the days where he might plonk himself at the table of a roadside restaurant to tuck into goat satay, chatting and joking with a gaggle of journalists and passersby.

But, early in his political career it was also clear Jokowi was willing to get his hands dirty to succeed. In 2012 a key sponsor for his nomination for Jakarta governor was Prabowo. To secure a nomination as president he assiduously courted Indonesia’s greatest dynast – Megawati Sukarnoputri, leader of his party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan or PDI-P), and daughter of Indonesia’s first president, Sukarno.

Meanwhile, as governor although Jokowi was not personally corrupt and rhetorically keen to clean up politics, he had taken a pragmatic view of political graft. “How do you think Jokowi got all of his budgets through so easily in Jakarta? He accepted that about 10 percent of the total budget is set aside for special interests of legislators,” an anonymous adviser to Jokowi once told Professor Marcus Mietzner, a specialist in Indonesia.

Once in power, Jokowi had to strike yet more deals to be able to not only survive but master Indonesia’s cut-throat politics. He came to office with just 37 percent of parliament behind him and large sections of the political elite viewing him with undisguised hostility. Not long after he won, parliament tried to get rid of direct local elections, trying to close the path the upstart Jokowi had used to rise. Meanwhile, Megawati saw him as a party official who should take her orders. When he resisted some PDI-P legislators began to raise the possibility of backing an impeachment of Jokowi, just months after he had taken office.

To fend off these challenges Jokowi deployed every trick in the book. He worked hand in glove with some of the sleaziest powerbrokers in parliament to coopt legislators and parties. Dubious legal maneuvers were also part of the arsenal from the start. In 2015 the Jokowi government used a power not used since Suharto – the government right to grant legal recognition to party leaders – to intervene in the internal struggles of the Golkar party and United Development Party (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan or PPP), toppling their leaders in favor of others better disposed toward him. Other parties got the message.

By mid-2016 Jokowi had a healthy majority. Few of the activists who had backed Jokowi in the name of reform and democracy were prepared to raise a fuss for the oligarchic leader of Golkar or the religiously conservative leader of the PPP.

It took Jokowi acquiescing to the defanging of Indonesia’s feared anti-corruption commission – the Corruption Eradication Commission or KPK – after he was re-elected in 2019 for civil society organizations to raise their voice in protest and express feelings of betrayal.

But should they have been surprised? Indonesia’s parties had long sought to hobble the institution. Jokowi, for his part, while talking a good game on corruption, accepted working with the grain of Indonesian machine politics, and the KPK had occasionally thrown spanners into the works. Bringing it under closer presidential control, with able investigators purged and dubious figures placed at its head, also expanded his power. The ability to threaten or withhold corruption investigations became another tool for Jokowi.

When he had to, he compromised further. After Prabowo’s refusal to accept the results of the 2019 election sparked dangerous riots in Jakarta, Jokowi recruited his former arch-rival into government. When he could get away with it, obstacles were shunted aside. A 2022 legislative tweak saw Deputy Chief Justice Aswanto forced to leave the court and served as a shot across the bow of a court that had delayed the introduction of Jokowi’s signature Omnibus Law on Job Creation.

When Jokowi moved to shape his succession and build a dynasty, there was precedent for nearly every tactic he employed. His push for development and better government never meant a commitment to norms of liberal democracy.

“Jokowi has a very formalistic understanding of democracy. For him, at the heart of democracy are elections. He likes elections because he has been winning them,” Mietzner, who has conducted extensive interviews with Jokowi, told The Diplomat via email. “But other than that, he has no substantive understanding of non-electoral values of democracy – and the longer he ruled, he also felt more comfortable in strong-arming electoral rivals.”

In private, Jokowi has long expressed an admiration for Suharto, according to several people who have worked closely with him. Nowadays this would not cause much shock, with critics of Jokowi directly drawing parallels between the two. But, in 2014 liberals and human rights advocates flocked to Jokowi as he promised to finally pursue a reckoning with abuses of the Suharto period.

Perhaps they should have known better. Jokowi long made his focus on growth clear. Suharto – after coming to power in a welter of blood – did oversee Indonesia’s most successful period of development. Jokowi and his family were among those that did well from this.

Political and economic legitimacy merged. “What’s the point of democracy if it doesn’t lead to prosperity?” Jokowi once commented to Mietzner.

Jokowi’s Mixed Record on Development

But if Jokowi’s priority was always development and improving the circumstances of Indonesians how does he fare by his own his standards?

“I ask for forgiveness for every heart which is maybe disappointed, for every hope that has perhaps not yet been realized,” he declared in his final state of the union address in a typical show of public humility. What Jokowi may not want to admit is that – despite some major achievements –  his economic record is thinner than hoped for.

The signature figure of the Jokowi period is 5 percent: the rate of GDP growth Indonesia has averaged under Jokowi, outside of the pandemic years. This is a respectable rate but short of the 7 percent that Jokowi set as a goal when he assumed office, and which is needed to meet Jokowi’s other goal of Indonesia becoming a high-income economy by 2045.

Foreign direct investment is hitting record highs. But, in a worrying trend, Indonesia’s incremental capital output ratio – the amount of GDP bang per buck of investment – is increasing, according to research by Masitya Cristallin, a trusted adviser to Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani. Meanwhile, government statistics have shown Indonesia’s middle class is shrinking as many workers move into more insecure jobs.

This is not for want of trying. The Omnibus Law on Job Creation was a huge package of measures designed to attract foreign investment by easing regulatory requirements, opening new areas for private investment, and making it easier to fire workers, among other changes.

Fiscal policy has also been achingly orthodox. Indonesia’s debt-to-GDP ratio currently sits at 39.4 percent amid a commitment to never have a budget deficit greater than 3 percent. The use of price and export controls to rein in inflation and questions about a boom in debt held by state-owned enterprises might raise some eyebrows. But few have looked that closely. Under Jokowi, Indonesia’s debt has not seen a downgrade from a single major rating agency.

Jokowi also overhauled Indonesian infrastructure, lovingly reeling off the figures in his last state of the union address: 366,000 kilometers of village roads, 1.9 million meters of village bridges, 2,700 kilometers of new toll roads, 6,000 kilometers of national roads, 50 new ports and airports, 43 new dams, and 1.1 million hectares of irrigation networks. Critics are right to point out investment in infrastructure is still lower than in the late Suharto period. Question marks also hover around some of the mega-projects like the Chinese-built Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail.

Many Indonesians can feel the improvements in their daily lives, but the effect on growth is ambiguous. Government figures claim logistics costs have dropped to around 14 percent of GDP compared to 24 percent a decade ago, but the World Bank recently downgraded its rating of Indonesian logistics.

In his second term, Jokowi found success focusing on the nickel industry. Under the rubric of “downstreaming,” Indonesia banned export of raw nickel ore from its enormous reserves and pushed Chinese companies to set up refining facilities in Indonesia. Despite reports about environmental costs and labor abuses, the government clearly views it as a major success.

Investment in metals and mining has boomed, making up nearly one-third of all FDI in 2023. Indonesia now accounts for 51 percent of global nickel production – a figure that is expected to rise. The government aims to use this as a base to move into production of batteries and electric vehicles – nickel being a key component of many batteries. It’s a gamble, but there are signs it could work with growing activity from Chinese and South Korean companies.

Growth has remained respectable, but stubbornly below target.

Jokowi’s preference for the concrete – often literally – over the abstract meant vital reforms have been ignored. Human capital remains underdeveloped. Indonesia’s education system is poor despite improving it being a key promise of Jokowi’s 2014 campaign. A lack of regulatory reform has also meant that rules forcing imports to be screened at particular points of entry are equivalent to a 22 percent tariff according to World Bank research. And accepting corruption as a political tool meant declining to take on a major barrier to business in Indonesia.

In Search of Jokowi’s Legacy

As we reach the end of Jokowi’s 10 years in office there is no denying his political talents. He is the most powerful Indonesian leader since Suharto and will leave office with an approval rating of 77 percent.

“We have to do better, because we’ll be doomed by this ‘Javanese king’ if we play around. I’m telling you, don’t try to play around with this thing. It’s terrifying,” declared Bahlil Ladahila, the new leader of Golkar, addressing the party in August.

Over the summer, Jokowi had taken the party in hand again, toppling an old ally and raising Bahlil as a yet more pliable figure. In private, many elites bitterly resent being at the mercy of a man some still view as an unsophisticated counter-jumper. But, few dare voice this publicly.

The irony is that the most powerful and popular political operator to emerge out of Indonesia’s political system may leave little legacy. When Jokowi leaves office, his tools of patronage and coercion will pass into the hands of Prabowo. Should the two men clash, Jokowi, lacking a political party of his own, will have no obvious way to leverage his popularity.

In this context, the dynasty building perhaps makes more sense. His last routes into power and influence will be Gibran and Bobby, should he win his gubernatorial race. But, barring the death of Prabowo and sudden ascension of Gibran to the presidency, these are thin reeds to rely on.

On a policy front, Jokowi likes to claim that while Indonesia is still not growing at 7 percent, he has laid the foundations for rapid growth in the coming years. Prabowo is claiming Indonesia will hit 8 percent growth and signaling a willingness to turn on the spending taps to make this happen. Many economists remain skeptical.

Jokowi’s final signature project is quixotic: a new capital called Nusantara being built in eastern Kalimantan. While Jakarta’s problems are undeniable, whether a wholesale move of the capital is the best solution, and whether a new capital will really succeed in making Indonesia less Java-centric, remains dubious. In any case, given the high costs and lack of private investors it may end up abandoned. Prabowo has pledged to continue the project but there have been hints that his team is not very interested.

Having come to office amid such high hopes, some disappointment was always inevitable. Even if Indonesia has not seen an economic take-off, it would be churlish to deny that there have been solid achievements. But, given his mastery of the political system, it is a shame Jokowi did not manage more.

The disappointment only deepens when one considers what this mastery cost, a damaged democratic system, and its final fruit, a dubious successor in the form of Prabowo. This plus a quarter-built capital city that the winds of political change could leave to molder in the jungle may prove Jokowi’s most enduring legacies.