Vedi Hadiz is Director and Professor of Asian Studies at the Asia Institute and an Assistant Deputy Vice-Chancellor International, University of Melbourne.
Prominent public intellectual and leading critic of the Soeharto regime Arief Budiman died on 23 April. Professor Vedi Hadiz reflects on the life of the dissident academic and Foundation Professor of Indonesian Studies at the University of Melbourne.
After a long, bitter, but largely uneventful campaign, it looks like President Joko Widodo will be re-elected with about 55 per cent of the vote. University of Melbourne academics offer their early thoughts on the results.
Professor Vedi Hadiz offers his take on the Indonesian elections, writing that the long election season has rarely been about contests between outright reformers and outright reactionaries, or between outright secularists and outright Islamists.
Jokowi was produced by a decentralised democratic system in which negotiation, including with oligarchs, was necessary for advancement. But now that he is president, he finds that he has nothing to bargain with except his personal popularity. As Professor Vedi Hadiz writes, negotiating with oligarchy may end up eroding the popularity Jokowi needs to negotiate with them in the first place.
