The lessons Jokowi can learn from predecessor Yudhoyono

Maria A. Ressa

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The lessons Jokowi can learn from predecessor Yudhoyono
Given the difficult decisions President Jokowi and his government must take, the track record of his predecessor provides a cautionary tale

It is a sad ending for the first leader directly elected by Indonesians. 

A little less than a month before ending his 10 years in office, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was ridiculed on social media. That’s saying a lot because Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, is the world’s top Twitter city. 

After his political party walked out of a crucial legislative vote and allowed a controversial bill to roll back democracy, #ShameOnYouSBY trended globally, fuelled by a flurry of outraged tweets.

Yudhoyono was being booed off the global stage. In New York at the UN General Assembly, he responded immediately, tweeting 38 times in 30 minutes – he opposed the new law, he tweeted, and it’s not his fault.

That only made it worse. Indonesians blamed Yudhoyono, whose lackluster leadership in his second term may long overshadow the good accomplished in his first term.

Indonesians lost their right to vote for local leaders, village heads, mayors and governors, a cornerstone of Indonesia’s democratic reforms which surfaced a new generation of leaders outside the political elite.  

Like Joko Widodo, known to all as Jokowi. His story shows how a new face can rise up Indonesia’s new democracy independent of old-style machinery and patronage. He was giving Indonesians new hope. 

3 things in common

When Jokowi was sworn into office on October 20, 2014, I couldn’t help but think how much the two men had in common: 

1. Both signaled a new beginning and came to power with a minority in Parliament.

Yudhoyono was the first president to be directly elected by the people at a time when it wasn’t even clear that Indonesia would survive its experiment with democracy. If it did, it would prove that Islam and democracy could go hand-in-hand. When he took office, the large political parties were in disarray, and he only had 10% of Parliament. 

Jokowi is the first president who is an “orang kecil” – the little people – the common man. In a country where people believed leaders were born or destined for their position, it changes how young Indonesians dream, marking what may be its true transition to a meritocracy and a more inclusive democracy. 

Jokowi ran under the banner of Megawati’s PDI-P. Although he won, his opponent consolidated leadership of Parliament (at 63%), passing laws seen to backtrack democracy even before Jokowi officially took office.  Jokowi has more than Yudhoyono’s 10%, with 37%.  He claims he will have majority within 6 months.

2. Both “double-crossed” their political mentors. 

Yudhoyono was the security minister of Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of Indonesia’s founding father, Sukarno, and the opposition figure against dictator Suharto, who was in power for 32 years.

In 2001, Megawati was elected president by the People’s Consultative Assembly, an electoral college of sorts which rubber-stamped Suharto’s rule. Megawati then tried to get her own mandate from the people in Indonesia’s first-ever direct presidential elections in 2004, but she lost to Yudhoyono, whom she never forgave for running against her.

In my reporting in 2004, I pointed out that Megawati snubbed the oath-taking of her former minister. The grudge she held against Yudhoyono would haunt Indonesian politics until today. 

She never accepted his apology (which he offered through the years), and although it would have made Jokowi’s campaign easier in 2014, insiders said Megawati again refused an alliance with Yudhoyono.


Jokowi grew up in a Java slum, became a carpenter and furniture exporter until the very law that was overturned last month allowed him to be elected mayor of his town. He catapulted to national fame when he ran for Jakarta governor under the guidance and mentorship of Prabowo Subianto, the former military general and Suharto son-in-law. It was clear to everyone, including Jokowi, Prabowo would be running for president in 2014.

“He can’t keep his word,” said Hashim Djojohadikusumo, Prabowo’s brother, multi-millionaire businessman. Hashim told me Jokowi promised to stay and run Jakarta for 5 years, a key element in what the brothers had envisioned as a Prabowo government.

3. Both face the same key issues: corruption, fuel subsidies, terrorism.

Part of the reason Yudhoyono was elected in 2004 was because of the rise of the al-Qaeda linked Jemaah Islamiyah. The Bali bombings in 2002, the JW Marriott suicide bombing in 2003, and the Australian embassy bombing in 2004 set the stage for Yudhoyono’s victory, a large part of why he won over Megawati, who was then perceived as relying on Yudhoyono to take care of terrorism. 

In my first interview with Yudhoyono as president in 2004, he identified terrorism, cutting down corruption, and ending fuel subsidies as key priorities.


Today, the terrorism threat has shifted to ISIS, the Islamic State in Syria & Iraq, and its recruitment of Southeast Asians, primarily Indonesians.

The irony, of course, is that 10 years later, Jokowi’s first challenge is cutting fuel subsidies, which is now about $20 billion a year, nearly 20% of Indonesia’s annual budget. 

Two months before he was sworn in as president in the final months of Yudhoyono’s tenure, Jokowi met with Yudhoyono in Bali and asked him to begin the subsidy cuts and raise the price of fuel. It would’ve been an acknowledgement of how deep the problem is, a leadership statement that cut across party lines stating that short-term pain is worth the long-term gain.

An insider familiar with details of the meeting told me Jokowi was bitterly disappointed. Jokowi told his adviser: “We spent 2 hours talking, and he only talked about fuel subsidy for 5 minutes. I just listened to him, and he talked a lot about himself.”

Unfortunately for Yudhoyono, this is the image he’s created among political insiders: risk-averse, surrounded by yes-men, concerned about his legacy. After his landslide re-election in 2009 with a 75% approval rating, Yudhoyono became complacent and seemed more focused on burnishing his international image than dealing with the real problems of Indonesia, including a large current account deficit, largely caused by its staggering fuel subsidy.

“He wants to be king,” another Jokowi insider told me. “He loves being president, but he doesn’t like doing the job. Here’s Jokowi coming to you, begging to some extent, and he rejected him and talked about his legacy!”

Through Yudhoyono’s decade in power, there were lots of rumbling about “policy drift” – the uncertainty and lack of decision-making that helped set the stage for the rise of Prabowo.

“The perception is that Yudhoyono has been frozen, has been inert,” Professor Greg Barton, who has been studying Indonesia for decades, told Rappler before the July elections. “People are saying whatever we want, we don’t want that. It’s kind of a reaction to what they’ve had for the last 5 years, and that’s been the main selling point for Prabowo.” 

Back to the future

This wasn’t always the case. 

Many analysts consider Yudhoyono’s first term from 2004 to 2009 Indonesia’s best 5-year period of economic reform and revitalization and a showcase of what can be accomplished given the political will and the push to implement, starting with the success of its anti-corruption body, which has jailed politicians, including those close to Yudhoyono.

Here are 2 more examples of reforms with far-reaching consequences:

·      Tax office reforms and tax amnesty, which boosted tax collection as a percent of GDP and extended the benefits of the formal economy to millions of workers.

 

·      Supply side liberalization that revitalized Indonesia’s air industry, tripling air passenger traffic from 2003 to 2012.

Source: Quvat

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

That’s what Yudhoyono showed Indonesia. It’s clear that the achievements of his first term are overshadowed by the failures of his second term.

Given the difficult decisions President Jokowi and his government must take, the track record of his predecessor provides a cautionary tale.

High expectations need to be managed with concrete actions that deliver results for the people. The devil is in the details, and details must be managed despite the political costs. Jokowi’s track record shows he knows that.

Now Indonesians just need to see how quickly he can deal with national realpolitik. (READ: Jokowi presidency: How fast can Indonesia change?)

 – Rappler.com

 

 

 

 

 

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Maria Ressa

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Maria A. Ressa

Maria Ressa has been a journalist in Asia for more than 37 years. As Rappler's co-founder, executive editor and CEO, she has endured constant political harassment and arrests by the Duterte government. For her courage and work on disinformation and 'fake news,' Maria was named Time Magazine’s 2018 Person of the Year, was among its 100 Most Influential People of 2019, and has also been named one of Time's Most Influential Women of the Century. She was also part of BBC's 100 most inspiring and influential women of 2019 and Prospect magazine's world's top 50 thinkers, and has won many awards for her contributions to journalism and human rights. Before founding Rappler, Maria focused on investigating terrorism in Southeast Asia. She opened and ran CNN's Manila Bureau for nearly a decade before opening the network's Jakarta Bureau, which she ran from 1995 to 2005. She wrote Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of al-Qaeda’s Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia, From Bin Laden to Facebook: 10 Days of Abduction, 10 Years of Terrorism, and How to Stand up to a Dictator.