Jokowi & Vox Populi

Jokowi & Vox Populi

By Yanto Soegiarto on 2:46 pm December 11, 2013.
Ask a taxi driver, a street vendor, or any ordinary citizen who they’d want to have as Indonesia’s next president and the likely answer will be Joko Widodo, the current governor of Jakarta.Then ask them why, and they will say because he is close to the people and committed to serve the people’s interests. Then ask them whether the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) will nominate him as its presidential candidate, and they will say Indonesia is desperate, and if the party’s chief patron Megawati Soekarnoputri doesn’t endorse him, that would mean the party doesn’t really care about the current dire state of the nation.

Go further and ask people whether Joko Widodo wouldn’t be better off if he were to complete his term as governor so that he can fix the city’s problems — such as traffic jams and floods — and they will say that if he’s president, he can do much more. With the people’s mandate, he can order the public works minister to improve infrastructure, scold the industry minister for promoting low-cost cars, and ask the housing officials to expedite building low-cost high-rise dwellings.

“As governor, he’s not getting the real support of the central government. It’s because people at the top are jealous of his ever-increasing popularity,” said Hasan, a taxi driver.
Hasan makes a total of about Rp 650,000 ($54) a day if traffic is not too bad, but he still has to pay for gasoline and deduct the taxi operator’s share. He can usually take home at least Rp 150,000, but not if traffic is bad, which can leave him indebted.

Traditional traders also experience hardship. Jono, a middle-aged Warung Tegal street-side food vendor, wondered why food prices are so high. He no longer sells traditional meat “empal” dishes because beef is so expensive. He also has had to reduce quality and was forced to increase prices a bit.

“Why do we have to import beef, rice, sugar, vegetables and fruit? Even salt is imported. We are an island nation with thousands of kilometers of coastline. It’s crazy, the government has failed. If Jokowi would be president, he wouldn’t allow all such un-Indonesian things to happen, Jono said.

Many families outside of Java also watch Jokowi on television and express their sympathy for him. Asked why she likes him while he is not even a presidential candidate, an elderly woman in Labuan Bajo, East Nusa Tenggara, said that he’s simply the people’s choice.

The same kind of feeling was expressed in Jambi, Sumatra, Medan, North Sumatra and many other parts of the country.

Foreign researchers, too, are keen on the governor. They have heard about Jokowi’s popularity and come to Indonesia to find out more. A researcher from Japan was surprised when she discovered that indeed all the people she interviewed rallied their support behind Jokowi.

What about the Democratic Party convention? High-quality candidates from the ruling party are jockeying to become presidential candidates.

But both Hasan and Jono were skeptical. None of the candidates can match Jokowi. Besides, they have heard about too many tales of corruption implicating party stalwarts.

Hasan and Jono also heard about the recently-held Anti-Corruption and Human Rights Day commemoration at the State Palace. They were both exasperated by the fact that between 2005 and 2013, at least 277 governors, mayors and district chiefs were implicated in corruption cases. Not to mention other huge corruption cases, including the Rp 6,7 trillion Bank Century scandal.

Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) chief Abraham Samad in his address in front of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono sent a strong signal that the KPK will not allow intervention by anyone, nor by any form of pressure.

That is encouraging for both Hasan and Jono. Abraham Samad gives them hope and they wonder whether he could he be Jokowi’s running mate. The two would be an awesome pair indeed.

Yanto Soegiarto is the managing editor of Globe Asia, a sister publication of the Jakarta Globe.