President Joko Widodo’s incoming government has stated that investment, not human rights, will be a priority in the coming term. Photo by Flickr user uyeah

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority”– Lord Acton

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”.

All things considered, it would not be a stretch to call Jokowi the man who may have singlehandedly turned the clock back on democracy in Indonesia. The political system that in 2014 ushered to power the small furniture entrepreneur who challenged the political establishment is now almost broken. It will be a huge struggle for the nation to restore the system to the same condition it was in when Jokowi was first elected.

Thanks to him, we are now back to 1998, when Indonesia launched massive political reforms after the end of the authoritarian Soeharto regime, when power was concentrated in the president’s hands. Some may even argue the situation is worse now.

Stepping aside, not stepping down

At the height of his power, Jokowi appeared to have gained control of most of the key institutions that supposedly provided democratic checks and balances. Not content with the powers and prerogatives that come with his office, he made political parties, the legislative branch, and the judiciary, including law enforcement agencies, subservient to his needs to govern.

By and large, Jokowi also controlled public opinion. His masterful use and control of the internet and social media, including effective and targeted use of bots and cyber armies, allowed him to sustain his popularity for as long as he could. His approval ratings stubbornly stayed above 70 percent, even in the last weeks of his presidency.

Jokowi amassed so much political power that he was almost beyond reproach. Forget about the free press playing the role as a pillar of democracy – it is now too busy struggling for survival.

While all this may have helped him to govern effectively – he got his way most of the time, including with his legislative agenda – it started to rear its ugly head when it became clear that Jokowi was also using his powers to build his own political dynasty. He clearly wants to remain influential, even powerful, after October 20.

After failing to get the Constitution changed to allow him to serve a third term, Jokowi ensured his eldest son Gibran Rakabuming Raka won the vice-presidency. In September he wrested control over Golkar, the country’s second largest political party. Now led by his top loyalist, Bahlil Lahadalia it will join the coalition government of the new president, Prabowo Subianto.

Jokowi is not stepping down; he is simply stepping aside. He will still have plenty of strings to pull in the next administration, through Gibran and Golkar. An unknown factor, which also determines how much influence he will have in the next government, is the extent to which Prabowo is indebted to him for helping to win the presidential race in February. Having Gibran as running mate certainly boosted Prabowo’s popularity and electoral chances.

Where does this leave Indonesia’s democracy? The short answer: in tatters.

Democracy in tatters

All Indonesia’s democratic institutions have become virtually dysfunctional with almost all power residing in the hands of the president. There is no incentive for Prabowo or any other future president  to change this. They will likely continue the same pattern of governing. In fact, Prabowo has already indicated that he is aiming to build an even bigger a coalition government, a move that will effectively stifle open opposition.

Towards the end of his rule, Jokowi’s coalition included all but one of the nine political parties in the House of Representatives (DPR), controlling 90 percent of the seats. For good measure, his coalition included powerful special interest groups from business, conservative Islam, the National Police, and the Indonesian Military (TNI).

This meant all political fights were waged within the ruling coalition. Major policy decisions, including key legislation, were already settled before they were brought for the DPR’s formal endorsement. The public were excluded from the decision-making processes. Transparency, essential for a working democracy, was out the window.

For example, the Omnibus Law on Jobs Creation, a key part of Jokowi’s legislative agenda, was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court partly because its deliberations were not fully transparent. The passage of the 2019 revision to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) Law, meanwhile, was approved within a week, depriving the public of their right to challenge its problematic provisions.

Co-opting political parties

When it comes to managing the coalition government, Jokowi was unrivaled by his three predecessors, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Megawati Soekarnoputri, and Abdurrahman Wahid. Unlike them, he did not chair any political party but was still able to control all the parties in his coalition. He did this through the effective use of sticks and carrots, often setting one political faction against another. He prevailed most of the time.

As for carrots, during his first term, Jokowi managed to bring three pro-Prabowo political parties — Golkar, the National Mandate Party (PAN) and the United Development Party (PPP) — into his ruling coalition by offering them Cabinet seats. Golkar and PPP were then beset by internal power struggles.

But at times, the approach could be more sticks than carrots.  For example, coalition member the Nasdem party  saw two of its ministers in the Cabinet go to jail for corruption, some say as punishment for not supporting the Prabowo-Gibran ticket in the February race. Other parties got the message not to mess around with the president.

It helped that the KPK, which in the past had sent many powerful figures to jail, fell under Jokowi’s control following the 2019 revision of the KPK law. His critics say this means he got to pick which figures the agency should go after.

Co-opting judiciary

He also exercised some control over the judiciary, including the country’s two highest courts.

The Constitutional Court in October last year bent the electoral law to allow the 36-year-old Gibran to contest the presidential election as running mate to Prabowo, although he was four years short of the minimum age. The court was then chaired by the husband of Jokowi’s younger sister.

And the Supreme Court changed the minimum age requirement to contest the elections for heads of regional government. This would have allowed Jokowi’s second son, 29-year-old Kaesang Pangarep to run in the Jakarta gubernatorial election in November. However, this plan went awry after the Constitutional Court took the opposite position to the Supreme Court and a rare massive demonstration outside the DPR building foiled lawmakers’ plans to legislate the proposed change.

Jokowi’s interventions in the top courts and the electoral process raised many big questions about ethics, but no investigation ever reached him. Instead, the chiefs of the Constitutional Court and the General Elections Commission lost their jobs.

Shrinking civic space

If we have to compare Jokowi with Indonesia’s previous long-time dictators, he was certainly nowhere near as murderous as Soeharto and he did not arbitrarily incarcerate his top opponents the way Sukarno did.

But early in his presidency in 2015, he did order the execution of all drug traffickers on death row, about 70 of them, even though many had not exhausted all available legal channels for reprieve. This was part of his declaration of “war on narcotics” that went down well with the public and shored up his popularity. Eighteen people were executed in three separate rounds before the killings stopped, apparently because government leaders whom he met during his trips to Europe had protested. Many of those on death row were foreigners.

The one notable incarceration under Jokowi was that of firebrand Islamic cleric Rizieq Shihab, founding chair of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), a vigilante group that attacked bars, night clubs and churches. Rizieq was jailed for four years for lying about his health condition during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The government subsequently outlawed FPI, the second Islamic group to be disbanded after the Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia, not for their criticisms, it claimed, but for violating the (newly amended) law on mass organisations. Civil society organisations felt uneasy but did not speak up about this clear violation of the freedoms of expression and of association, both guaranteed by the constitution.

Jokowi used the military option in in Papua, where he allowed TNI to increase its presence to quell separatist rebels, after his initial efforts at promoting dialogues and improving economic prosperity in Papua failed to change the situation on the ground. To his credit, he refrained from using the military to fulfill his power ambitions.

Enabling authoritarianism

Jokowi found and exploited weaknesses and flaws in Indonesia’s democratic political system. While he did not break any law, he had no qualms about breaching ethics to fulfill his power ambitions. Most presidents before him – Sukarno and Soeharto excepted – would not go there.

For some, Jokowi’s biggest legacy may be the greater economic prosperity he promoted. For others it may be Nusantara, the new capital city project in East Kalimantan that he launched. But his longest lasting legacy may be the damage he has done to democracy.

While Jokowi may not fully fit the description of an authoritarian leader, the political system he leaves behind, including his governance model, may enable the rise of one in the future.

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