Ary Hermawan – President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo will end his presidency on a low note this week as a "reformist" president who turned back the clock on Indonesian democracy. According to the latest polls, he remains popular among the general population, but he has lost any credibility with the progressives that once supported him.
However, Jokowi's descent into political despotism was by no means unexpected. While Indonesia at Melbourne authors shared the same hope of many Indonesians after his election in 2014, they were only cautiously optimistic about his presidency.
Regardless of Jokowi's ideology or leadership style, or whether he was ever a true democrat, the outgoing President faced tough challenges, including from oligarchs and Islamists – or even alliances of both – particularly during his first term in office. However, his responses to these events seemed to push Indonesia further and further away from the democratic ideals of the post-Soeharto Reformasi movement.
We look back at the critical moments in Jokowi's presidency through some of the articles written by our authors to make sense of what seems to be an inglorious end to his 10 years in power.
Cautious optimism
Our first article focusing on Jokowi was published in May 2014, shortly after his nomination by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). Even when Jokowi was at the height of his popularity, having only recently been elected Jakarta governor, concerns were raised over whether he had what it takes to rule the country. In her article, Helen Pausacker questioned whether the "strategies he used as Mayor of a small, provincial city – and even as Governor of a vibrant mega-city like Jakarta – can be applied to ruling a country". In short, Jokowi was seen as relatively inexperienced.
It is no surprise that when Jokowi was elected president in July that year, our experts were mostly cautiously optimistic at best about the prospects of his leadership bringing meaningful progress to Indonesian democracy. The question was then quite simple: can a political outsider with no direct links to the old political powers bring about change in a country that was still dominated by the New Order's oligarchy?
Our senior editor, Tim Lindsey, wrote in August 2014 that Jokowi came to "office burdened by extraordinarily high, perhaps unrealistic, hopes that his administration will be transformative". He reminded readers that Jokowi could face the same problem that undermined his predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono: elite machinations.
When Jokowi announced his first Cabinet, few were happy with its composition. This is because, as pointed out by Lindsey on October 2014, "at least 15 of the 34 ministers are there because of their party affiliations, while others are included because of their political influence". Jokowi, in theory, Lindsey said, could have appointed experts or technocrats with no political affiliations. But he failed his first test as president, as he chose to kowtow to the interests of the elite.
In the early years of his presidency, the Jokowi government was stricken by elite conflicts. In an article that we published on in April 2016, Vedi Hadiz highlighted the fact that Jokowi did not have enough allies among the elite, and lacked by a cohesive social base that could cushion his government from elite pressures.
He said: "Jokowi's election campaign was notable for the network of volunteers it was able to deploy, giving the misleading impression of a solid base of grassroots support, if not organisation. While many of these networks were no doubt made up of those with genuine intentions of reform, others were activated by allies situated at or near the heart of oligarchic power, with whom deals had been made".
Hopes dashed
The President faced his biggest test in 2016 in the lead up to the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election. His close ally, Jakarta Governor Basuki 'Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama, was accused of blasphemy for his remarks on a Quranic verse. The case set off a series of massive sectarian rallies that eventually led to Ahok's incarceration.
The rallies, as Greg Fealy wrote on this website, were more than just about Ahok. They revealed the scale at which "elite political forces have used religion to undermine the government and bolster their own prospects". They did pose a serious challenge to the President. The massive sectarian campaigns against Ahok, online and offline, in Greg's words made him "so reviled a figure in the Muslim community that Jokowi can no longer support him, or even ensure that the case is handled on its legal merits". The protests even spawned a 'replace the president' movement.
Indonesia's democracy seemed to go downhill after the 2016 events. In August 2017, Jokowi issued new law amending the 2013 Law on Social Organisations that was meant to control the Islamist dissidents who he now saw as a serious political threat. The law, as pointed out by Lindsey on his article on the issue, "removes judicial review requirements and other checks and balances in the 2013 Law that were intended to protect civil society". The law, which was first used to disband Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI), is widely considered to be illiberal, if not authoritarian. Following HTI's disbandment, our senior editor warned that it risked turning "the Islamists into civil rights heroes".
In September 2017, the Jakarta police broke up an academic discussion at the offices of renowned activist NGO the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation (LBH) for discussing the 1965 anti-communist purge that killed at least 500,000 people. A question was then posed: is Indonesia sliding towards a "Neo-New Order"?
At this point, hopes for a better Indonesia under Jokowi seemed to have become very remote. When Jokowi met with participants of the Kamisan rally at the State Palace in September 2018, the first time he did so after being elected President on the platform of human rights, there was little hope that the meeting would lead to anything. As described by Ken Setiawan, "it has become evident that [Jokowi's] government has little interest in pursuing justice for past crimes".
Ken explained why that is the case: "The establishment of non-judicial bodies like the National Harmony Council that serve to shield perpetrators from being held accountable illustrates this. In addition, Jokowi appointed former Commander of the Armed Forces Wiranto as coordinating minister of politics, law and security, whose portfolio includes gross human rights violations. It is hard to believe Wiranto will tackle past abuses given that he was involved in numerous violations under the Soeharto regime and has been indicted for human rights crimes in Indonesia-occupied East Timor."
The withering of democracy
Jokowi's re-election in 2019 was still welcome by many, but it was no longer portrayed as a resounding victory for Indonesia's democracy. Melbourne experts – Vedi Hadiz, Tim Lindsey, Dave Mcrae, Rachael Diprose, Ken Setiawan, Richard Chauvel and Ariane Utomo – were given the space to express their views on it on this blog.
Utomo's comments reflect the mood of many Indonesian progressives at the time who were disillusioned by Jokowi's illiberal turn and chose to abstain as an act of protest against the current system.
She wrote: "I felt apprehensive about voting this year. Over the past two years, Jokowi has demonstrated increasingly illiberal tendencies, politicising law enforcement to investigate or arrest prominent government critics. In the weeks approaching the election, there appeared to be growing momentum for the golput movement, whose proponents – in my view – had laid out solid arguments behind their reasons for abstaining, such as the lack of human rights progress during Jokowi's first term, and his disappointing choice of running mate, Ma'ruf Amin."
Indonesian democracy further deteriorated in Jokowi's second term, which was marked by Jokowi's "reconciliation" with his former election rival, Prabowo Subianto.
One of the largest attacks on the legacy of Reformasi was the scheme to tame the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), which has sent many major political figures to jail. The gutting of the KPK, as explained by Simon Butt in September 2019, was mainly achieved through a revision to the KPK law under Jokowi's watch that effectively ended its independence.
In their article published in September 2019, Rafiqa Qurrota Ayun and Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir suggested that we stop framing Jokowi as a " good person", and stop relying on the thesis that a "good person" alone can fix Indonesia's problems. They wrote: "Seeing Jokowi as a "good person" distorts our understanding of many of the problems created by the government. There is now ample evidence that he represents no obstacle to the predatory elites attempting to corrupt the reform agenda."
Following the revision of the KPK law, Jokowi pushed for the passage of a larger and highly problematic legislative agenda that benefited the elite more than the people, including the Omnibus Law on Job Creation and the revision of the Criminal Code. At this point, student activists were so frustrated that they decided to take to the streets to protest the reformist president under the banner of Reformasi Dikorupsi (Reform Corrupted).
The rise of a dynasty?
In 2020, Jokowi helped normalise political dynasties by supporting his son to contest the election in Solo, Central Java (and his son-in-law in North Sumatra), as Yoes C. Kenawas wrote on this blog in September that year. Political dynasties have long been the norm in Indonesian politics, particularly in the regions. The nomination of Gibran is a text book example of that, as Yoes pointed out: it "shows how the existing electoral regime could disincentivise political parties from building strong party institutionalisation. After all, both politicians and political parties are rational actors who act based on the incentive structures they face".
Three years later, Gibran was nominated as a vice-presidential candidate after the Constitutional Court, led by Jokowi's brother-in-law, issued a ruling removing the age limit for former regional heads to contest the presidential election, enabling Gibran to run. The circumstances in which the ruling was made are regarded by many as deeply problematic. Legal attempts to justify it, as argued by Feri Amsari in his article on this blog in September 2024, can even be seen as a threat to the rule of law.
At this point, it is safe to say that the question is no longer about whether Jokowi is a reformist constrained by oligarchic forces. The President is now seen as a key part of the flawed political system that many who voted for him in 2014 hoped he would dismantle. Instead, what Indonesians get is potentially a new political dynasty that could make Indonesian elections less inclusive than before. Indonesia's democracy now seems to be in a state of 'demergency' (democracy emergency)
It is thus perhaps fitting that our final article about Jokowi, written by senior journalist Endy Bayuni, gave a damning judgment of Jokowi's 10-year presidency as a 'tragedy' for Indonesia's democracy.