07:36
Tieng Anh Vui
WHEN, earlier last year, it looked as though Joko Widodo would let slip the chance to become Indonesia’s president, thousands of volunteers rallied round to propel him to election victory. They staged a giant rock concert in Jakarta, the capital, and campaigned ceaselessly to fend off a late challenge from the opposing candidate. But less than 100 days after Mr Joko, known to all as Jokowi, took his oath of office in October, these same volunteers are starting to turn against him.
On January 15th Jokowi’s volunteers, rock stars from the election gig among them, marched to the Jakarta headquarters of the anti-corruption commission, the KPK, in protest against their president’s candidate for police chief. Jokowi had proposed Budi Gunawan as his sole pick for the post, only for the KPK to name Mr Budi four days later as under suspicion of corruption. Jokowi refused to revoke the nomination. So, in an open letter, Jokowi volunteers reminded the president of his pledge to pick only clean candidates for office, and threatened to take to the streets if he let the appointment stand.
For six years Mr Budi served as an adviser to Megawati Sukarnoputri, a former president and still the leader of Jokowi’s party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, or PDI-P. Many suspect that Jokowi, in the Javanese way, was deferring to his patron by promoting Mr Budi, whose suspicious bank balance the authorities began to investigate back in 2010. Perhaps Jokowi hoped that parliament might veto Mr Budi’s appointment, so that he would not have to. But the opposition-controlled legislature mischievously declared Mr Budi to be a fit person to lead the police.
Forced to choose between snubbing Ms Megawati or his own volunteers, Jokowi dithered again. In a televised address to the country on January 16th he said that he had “postponed” Mr Budi’s appointment, but not “cancelled” it.
Jokowi, a former furniture salesman from outside the political establishment, has made some bold decisions since he took office, notably scrapping popular but profligate petrol subsidies on January 1st. But his indecision over Mr Budi’s appointment is the first blot on his leadership. At the start of his five-year presidency, with many battles still to fight, he may need to remember that his true allies are his popular supporters. Ms Megawati, the daughter of Indonesia’s founding president, endorsed Jokowi only reluctantly as the PDI-P’s presidential candidate. The party itself did little to support his campaign when it mattered most.
It is not only Jokowi’s volunteers who are feeling let down, but, over a separate matter, countries that have applauded his rise. On January 17th six drug-traffickers, five of them foreign nationals from Brazil, Malawi, the Netherlands, Nigeria and Vietnam, were executed by firing squad after Jokowi turned down their appeals for clemency. Human-rights groups condemned the executions; Brazil and the Netherlands recalled their ambassadors. Elsewhere, Jokowi’s policy of destroying vessels found illegally fishing in Indonesian waters has also caused concern among the country’s neighbours. So, too, have statements from his advisers hinting at growing aloofness towards ASEAN, the ten-country Association of South-East Asian Nations, of which Indonesia is the most populous member.
Jokowi’s predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, followed a “million friends, zero enemies” governing philosophy, which in the end seemed little more than a screen for indecisiveness. Jokowi wishes to appear tougher. But standing up to the entrenched elites would be a better measure of that than executing drug mules.
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