Jokowi in the Covid-19 Era: Repressive Pluralism, Dynasticism and the Overbearing State

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has thrown President Joko Widodo’s second-term plans into disarray. Jokowi’s aspiration for dramatically accelerated development between 2019 and 2024 to secure his legacy as a transformative president now appears unachievable. As he has grappled with managing the pandemic and salvaging key parts of his agenda, he has consistently prioritised the economy over public health, and has also abandoned commitments to uphold or strengthen an array of political and civil rights that are crucial to the quality of Indonesian democracy. He has allowed the military and intelligence services to greatly expand their role in public life, and his government has, in the name of defending Indonesian pluralism, initiated discriminatory measures against sections of the Islamist community, which the government sees as sectarian and intolerant. The president’s reformist credentials have also been dented by Jokowi’s decision to support the nominations of his son and son-in-law in mayoral elections in two major cities, bringing accusations of dynasticism and elitism.

Pandemi Covid-19 telah mengacak-acak rencana babak kedua pemerintahan Joko Widodo. Aspirasi Jokowi untuk mengakselerasi pembangunan secara dramatis antara 2019 dan 2024, demi meninggalkan warisan sebagai presiden yang transformatif, kini nampaknya tak mungkin tercapai. Seiring upayanya untuk mengelola pandemi dan menyelamatkan bagian-bagian penting dari agendanya, Presiden Jokowi secara konsisten memprioritaskan ekonomi di atas kesehatan publik serta menanggalkan komitmen untuk menegakkan atau menguatkan serangkaian hak politis dan sipil yang penting bagi kualitas demokrasi Indonesia. Dia telah membuka ruang lebar bagi militer dan intelijen untuk meningkatkan perannya di kehidupan publik. Pemerintahannya juga telah menginisiasi kebijakan-kebijakan diskriminatif terhadap sebagian komunitas Islam yang dipandang pemerintah sebagai sektarian dan intoleran, dengan dalih melindungi pluralisme Indonesia. Prestasi reformis Jokowi juga dinodai oleh keputusannya mendukung nominasi anak dan menantunya di pemilihan walikota di dua kota besar, yang membawa tuduhan politik dinasti dan elitisme kepadanya.

Keywords:

• repressive pluralism
• dynasticism
• illiberalism
• democratic regression
• anti-Islamism
• securitisation
• autocratising
• Pancasila
• Covid-19
• coronavirus

JEL classifications:

• D72
• D73
• K42

INTRODUCTION

As President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) marks the first year of his final five-year term, observers have been searching for signs of whether the second half of his presidency will be markedly different from the first. He is aware that his predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, was widely judged to have achieved little in his second term, and he is determined not to repeat this. Ever impatient and ever ambitious, Jokowi began his second term last year wanting not just to consolidate the attainments of his first term but to far exceed them by launching much bolder, more visionary projects than he had between 2014 and 2019. He wanted to leave a monumental legacy and be remembered as a great builder of Indonesia, at least the equal of President Soeharto (1966–98), upon whom he partly models himself (Warburton 2016). The crowning achievement was to be the construction of a new capital city in East Kalimantan, but he had other goals as well, including continuing infrastructure development, expanding the industrial and technological sectors, improving skills and human capital through better education and training, and raising research and innovation capacity. In short, he wanted the 2019–24 period to be one of transformation.

When the Covid-19 pandemic broke in Indonesia in March 2020, it not only brought a potentially devastating public health crisis but also threatened to shatter Jokowi’s grand plans. Achieving his second-term objectives during stable economic conditions would have been challenging enough; doing so in a time of recession and upheaval will be near impossible.

The combination of the Covid-19 crisis and his being a final-term president appears to have sharply concentrated his mind, leading him to discard many aspects of his broader social and political reform agenda and focus single-mindedly on what is most important to him: the economy and development. Many scholars have noted Jokowi’s thin and declining commitment to rights and democratisation goals, often commenting that he supported them only so long as they cost him little political capital and did not adversely affect his economic plans (Warburton 2016; Power 2018). But now, with the economy in recession and the pandemic worsening, he has cast off most of his remaining progressive policies with seemingly scant regret. Shorn of the nominally liberal outer layers of his political identity, Jokowi’s core preoccupations with material prosperity and advancement are now in clear view. Moreover, far from lowering expectations of what is achievable during his second term, Jokowi has doubled down, appearing to convince himself that the pandemic is a unique opportunity to bring about sweeping change and realise his dream of a powerful and highly developed Indonesia. This can be seen in his constant exhortations for Indonesians to be disciplined, to take on new, more productive mindsets and habits, and to not be downcast by the current crisis but to rise above it and behold the nation’s glimmering prospects. Jokowi’s determination is also evident in his prioritising of economic recovery over public health, his mobilisation of the military to enforce Covid-19 protocols, his seeming indifference to the growing intimidation of government critics by state agencies and his supporters, and his willingness to allow extra-legal means to suppress Islamism. Most of these tendencies have been apparent for several years, but they are now far more pronounced as he strives to impel Indonesians to fulfil their potential, as he sees it, and to secure his place in history as a great president.

One aspect of Jokowi’s behaviour in the past year has been new and unexpected: a tendancy towards dynasticism. Jokowi’s rapid rise from local to national political leader was due in no small measure to a perception that he embodied many of the principles of the Reformasi, including a disdain for the sorts of nepotistic practices that had defined the last decade of the Soeharto era and that have persisted among much of the political elite since then. Jokowi has been asked repeatedly whether he wants his children to follow him into politics and has always responded indifferently. And yet, over the past year, his son and son-in-law have launched their political careers with the blessing and strong behind-the-scenes support of the president. Refusing to use one’s position to advance the prospects of one’s relatives has proved to be another expendable principle for Jokowi as he has set about ensuring his family’s intergenerational entrenchment. Quite possibly, this shift in stance has been influenced by the crisis and his own sense that he needs to have an ongoing national role after his presidency.

This article is divided into four sections. The first examines Jokowi’s response to the pandemic, charting changes in his attitudes and policies. The second analyses the government’s growing securitisation approach to managing public health, and social and political problems, with particular attention given to the mobilisation of the military, the rising police penetration of civilian positions and the greater influence of the State Intelligence Agency (BIN). The third section explores the Jokowi government’s efforts to suppress and marginalise Islamist groups in the name of safeguarding Indonesia’s pluralist values. Finally, Jokowi’s dynasticism and its connection to manoeuvring for the 2024 general and presidential elections will be considered. The article concludes by arguing that Covid-19 and its political fallout have accelerated Indonesia’s trend towards democratic regression.

JOKOWI’S COVID-19 RESPONSE

Covid-19 has posed the severest challenge of Jokowi’s presidency. It has also tested Indonesia’s capacity as a state to deal with the pandemic and its public health and economic consequences. I will briefly describe the public health crisis before concentrating on Jokowi’s own response and the consequences for Indonesia’s democracy.

As of 6 October 2020, more than 311,000 Indonesians had contracted Covid-19, 11,374 had died from the virus and 236,437 had recovered (Worldometer 2020). Both the infection and death rates have been climbing steeply since late August, suggesting that the spread of the virus is increasingly out of control. All provinces now have infections, and some 70 districts are red zones, meaning they are areas of high infection risk (Azanella 2020). The most seriously affected province has been Jakarta, where infection rates in September exceeded 1,500 new cases per day, forcing the Jakarta governor, Anies Baswedan, to reimpose large-scale social restrictions (PSBBs) on movement and gatherings on 14 September. Especially alarming for the city was that the rate of positive tests had leapt from 5% in June to 12.2% in early September, pointing to the accelerating spread within the community (Koran Tempo 2020j). Other badly affected provinces included West Java, East Java, Central Java, Bali and South Kalimantan. Numerous authorities believe that the real infection rate is much higher than the official rate, perhaps between four and ten times greater, suggesting that well over one million people have the virus.

Many epidemiologists and other public health experts have been highly critical of the government’s policies. They claim that its public announcements have been confusing, with different ministers often making contradictory or unscientific claims; that mitigation measures have been inadequate and inconsistent; and that too much hope is being placed on the early availability and roll-out of a vaccine (Cahya and Gorbiano 2020). In short, they argue that the government has prioritised economic activity over public health, as evidenced by the composition of the National Economic Recovery and Covid-19 Response Team, which was established in mid-July and has many more economists and businesspeople than medical experts.

Jokowi’s own response to the crisis has varied over time, but his default position has been to prefer the economy over public health. When the virus first began spreading across Asia in January and February, the president was persuaded by his health minister, Terawan Agus Putranto, and others, that Indonesia might escape the infection. Terawan attributed the absence of Covid-19 to the prayerfulness and good diet of Indonesians, while other ministers speculated that the population’s racial characteristics had bestowed immunity or that Indonesia’s tropical climate had inhibited infection (Pramudiarja 2020). In early February, Jokowi said, ‘Hopefully the virus will not happen in our country’, and one of his senior ministers proclaimed that ‘Indonesia was the only big nation in Asia not to have the virus’ (CNN Indonesia 2020a). Several days later, a sceptical World Health Organization expressed concern that Indonesia had recorded no cases, and urged more intensive testing and preventative measures (CNN Indonesia 2020c). Jokowi did instruct his ministers to put preventative measures in place, but they responded complacently, and the government continued to talk up Indonesia as a safe destination for investment and tourism.

The threat of Covid-19 became a reality on 2 March when Indonesia recorded its first cases. Within a month, almost 1,800 cases across 32 districts, and 117 deaths, had been confirmed, with infection rates trending upwards (Idhom 2020). Jokowi was caught between trying to slow the spread of the virus and trying to minimise disruption to the economy. He compromised, introducing stricter public health protocols—such as social distancing, hand-cleaning regimes, disinfection of communal spaces and restrictions on public movement—while resisting lockdowns where they would have heavy economic consequences or provoke social unrest. He later admitted to withholding information on the seriousness of the pandemic in order to avoid panic (Pangestika 2020). Particularly notable at this time was the rising tension between the national government and regional administrations, which were seeking stronger measures to control infection rates. The central government forbade local governments from implementing lockdowns without approval from the health ministry, which was slow to grant approval. This tardiness was due not only to a determination to limit economic disruption but also to Jokowi’s desire not to be outflanked on Covid-19 policy by provincial governors. He seemed particularly irked by Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan, a political rival, who consistently pressed for stronger mitigation measures. As Mietzner (forthcoming) has convincingly argued, the government’s half-hearted approach to public health during these first few months of the pandemic greatly reduced its chances of containing the virus.

A new phase in the government’s Covid-19 response came in late May when, after concerted lobbying from business groups, Jokowi resolved to ease restrictions and revive economic activity as quickly as possible. Business leaders warned him that significant sectors of the economy faced collapse, leading to massive unemployment, if no relief was forthcoming. He soon after ordered generous economic relief measures and announced what he called a ‘new normal’, in which citizens would need to observe social distancing and sanitation protocols but could return to work and resume their usual consumption activities (Cahya and Gorbiano 2020). He declared that ‘until an effective vaccine is found, we [Indonesians] have to live peacefully with Covid-19’ (Puspitasari and Florentin 2020).

The president’s most recent position, evident since July, has been one of bullishness, seemingly based on his conviction that he has hit upon the right policy mix to keep the pandemic under control without doing great harm to the economy. A major source of his confidence has been comparative data suggesting that Indonesia is much less affected than countries of equivalent population. In cabinet meetings and palace discussions, Jokowi is said to refer constantly to the severity of India’s and Brazil’s infection and mortality rates, comparing them to Indonesia’s much lower rates. He told governors in mid-July that growth would have dropped by 17% if he had put the country into a full and extended lockdown, and he said that Indonesia was more successful in dealing with Covid-19 than the United States, Britain, India and Brazil (Sutrisno 2020).

More recently, Jokowi has continued to display vaulting optimism about Indonesia’s ability to bounce back from the crisis. When addressing the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) in mid-August, he likened Covid-19 to a ‘computer crash’ that would require Indonesia ‘to reboot its economy’ but said this would ‘turn the crisis into an opportunity to make great leaps’. References to Indonesia’s leaping forwards out of the pandemic have become frequent in his speeches. He also told the MPR the following: ‘Our patterns of thinking and work ethic have to change. Flexibility, speed and precision are very much needed. Efficiency, collaboration and technology usage have to be prioritised. National discipline and national productivity must be raised.’ He went on to refer to the ‘transformation of the economy’ from being ‘procedure-driven to results-driven’, from requiring ‘standard work to outstanding work’, and from involving ‘complicated, long procedures to smart shortcuts’ (Kumparan 2020e). In these words, we can see Jokowi’s vision for an advanced Indonesia, but we can also sense his frustration, and perhaps despair, that the country is not already an advanced one. His speech also makes clear that he has come to view the deep disruption to daily life caused by Covid-19 as a precious opportunity to hasten long-overdue reforms. Nonetheless, his optimism appears fanciful, as if the deep structural and cultural problems that hinder Indonesia’s economic development might be quickly cast aside, like a captive’s shackles, liberating the nation to attain its rightful success.

Indonesia’s poor Covid-19 containment record points not only to questionable policy-making since the start of the pandemic but also to deeper problems. To begin with, Indonesia’s public health system is one of the most poorly resourced in the Southeast Asian region. It has relatively low hospital and clinic funding, one of the lowest ratios of doctors per head of population in the region, and high levels of corruption in health expenditure (Mietzner, forthcoming). All of this means that the health system has limited capacity to cope with a crisis, as became evident in Jakarta and Surabaya, where isolation wards and intensive care units quickly filled when infection rates surged. Also notable is that knowledge of and respect for scientific data and advice is limited in the current government. Multiple ministers have peddled dubious remedies, such as the agriculture minister’s advocacy of eucalyptus leaf necklaces and the research minister’s promotion of coconut oil supplements (Firdaus and Ratcliffe 2020). Perhaps one of the most serious obstacles for Jokowi has been the incompetence of Terawan. Since his early misadventures during the Covid-19 crisis, he has seemingly lost the confidence of much of the medical profession and his own ministry, and has largely disappeared from public view.

SECURITISATION OF COVID-19 MEASURES AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

An important aspect of Jokowi’s Covid-19 management strategy is the use of the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) and the State Intelligence Agency (BIN). Many governments across the world have mobilised their armed forces to assist the police and civilian agencies in dealing with the pandemic. Given the magnitude of the Covid-19 problem, this mobilisation has been broadly considered justifiable. But in the Indonesian case, several aspects of Jokowi’s policy are distinctive: first, his policy follows a trend throughout his presidency of widening the role of the security apparatus, not only the military and the intelligence agency but also the police; second, TNI has been granted powers to directly sanction civilians; third, TNI and BIN have pursued roles in the production of anti-Covid-19 medicine and Covid-19 testing, when they lack the expertise to do so. In pursuing such policies, Jokowi is securitising the management of social and political problems beyond what is required. Rather than seeing such problems as matters primarily for civilian authorities, which may be assisted by TNI and BIN, the government has instead designated them as ‘security’ threats, which therefore justify the use of extraordinary measures by the state. The result of this securitisation process is that the military, police and intelligence service have a wider scope for intervention and influence in society than at any time since the early days of the Reformasi in the late 1990s. This is now a contributing factor in the declining quality of democratic life.

Jokowi’s deployment of TNI has been the most prominent aspect of his securitisation approach. He has reversed Yudhoyono’s policy of keeping the military largely in the barracks and limiting its involvement in civilian affairs. Instead, he has allowed the armed forces, especially the army, a much greater role in the community. This includes counterterrorism operations; public ideological campaigns to promote the national doctrine of Pancasila; food distribution, infrastructure and welfare activities in grassroots communities; and guarding of prisons.

During the pandemic, Jokowi’s use of the military has been taken to a new level. In late May, as part of the ‘new normal’ campaign, some 340,000 military and police personnel were mobilised to enforce the government’s Covid-19 protocols across the country. This was taken further in early August when Jokowi issued Presidential Instruction 6/2020, greatly broadening TNI’s Covid-19 role to include mounting patrols in some 83,000 villages across the nation to ‘mentor’ the community on correct Covid-19 behaviour and dispense a vaccine when it becomes available. Moreover, military personnel were given the authority to impose punishments on members of the public for breaching the protocols. These included requiring errant citizens to sweep gutters, clean up rubbish or do push-ups in the street (Kumparan 2020a). This amounted to a significant increase in TNI’s penetration into civilian domains, and many legal observers claimed that the government was in breach of the 2004 TNI law, which states that the military’s role is to defend the nation from external attack, not to ensure domestic security (Koran Tempo 2020h). In addition, Jokowi has appointed senior TNI officers to a variety of ‘command roles’ in Covid-19 operations. One of his first appointments was Lieutenant General Doni Monardo to head the Covid-19 Response Acceleration Task Force. Doni surprised officials by regularly attending Covid-19 coordination meetings in uniform. More significant was the elevation of General Andika Perkasa, commander of the army, to the position of deputy head of the Committee for Covid-19 Handling and National Economic Recovery (Jakarta Post 2020b). Andika is well connected politically, being the son-in-law of Abdullah Mahmud Hendropriyono, a powerful retired general and intelligence boss, who is close to the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) and its chair, Megawati Sukarnoputri. Andika is not the only general with strong political ties. Kunto Arief Wibowo, the commander of West Java’s Siliwangi division, is the son of former Soeharto vice-president Try Sutrisno and the son-in-law of former defence minister Ryamizard Ryacudu. Also, Maruli Simanjuntak, the commander of the Presidential Security Force of Indonesia, is the son-in-law of Luhut Panjaitan, the coordinating minister of maritime and investment affairs, and a trusted Jokowi advisor (Honna 2020).

Some commentators have accused Jokowi of returning Indonesia to the New Order period when the military was a dominant political and social force. Long-time TNI analyst Jun Honna has argued persuasively that this is not the case. Honna contends that Jokowi is instrumentalising TNI because it makes him appear a strong and resolute leader, and that the expansion of military functions provides appointment opportunities for a growing number of middle-ranking officers who are without substantive postings. The president is not seeking to return TNI as a political force but rather to use the military to bolster his ability to implement policies and regulations (Honna 2020).

Jokowi’s behaviour since mid-2020 has underscored Honna’s analysis. Jokowi has repeatedly linked the involvement of the military to the need to instil public discipline so that Covid-19 protocols are observed. Indeed, ‘discipline’ has become the president’s mantra in recent months. When he announced the joint police–TNI mobilisation, he said it was necessary to discipline society. Presidential Instruction 6/2020 was titled Maintaining Self-Discipline and Law Enforcement of Health Protocols in the Prevention and Control of Covid-19, and contained multiple references to TNI’s working with national agencies and regional governments to ensure discipline. In Jokowi’s Independence Day speech, he exhorted Indonesians to ‘increase discipline and national productivity’ so that the nation could progress quickly. Erick Thohir, the executive chair of the Committee for Covid-19 Handling and National Economic Recovery, elaborated further on the TNI–discipline nexus: ‘The task of TNI is to maximise the level of Covid-19 protocol discipline in society. Discipline hopefully will safeguard society’ (Patnistik 2020). It is apparent that Jokowi believes that soldiers will be much more effective than police and civilian officials at enforcing the protocols, and that having community obedience as a mitigation measure is critical to the success of reopening the economy without a surge in infection rates. In addition, Jokowi undoubtedly feels that the military will promptly obey his instructions, unlike so many parts of the bureaucracy, which appear to have been wilfully dilatory or torpid in carrying out his instructions. In June, the palace released a video of Jokowi angrily rebuking ministers for lacking a sense of crisis and for responding tardily to Covid-19, adding that he might reshuffle the cabinet to get better results (Jakarta Post 2020a).

Covid-19 is not the only area in which Jokowi is treating the military favourably. In early July, he granted authority to the defence ministry to develop a 165,000-hectare food estate in Central Kalimantan as part of the government’s efforts to ensure national food supplies. Jokowi’s decision shocked many officials because peatland in Kalimantan had been deemed unsuitable for intensive food production, and the defence minister, Prabowo Subianto, had wanted the food estate to be situated in Papua (Anam 2020; Sulistyawati 2020). The president defended his actions, saying that defending the nation was about not only procuring weapons but also ensuring food resilience, ‘so we can produce whatever food needs we have and to strengthen national defence, especially in food’. Similarly, the defence ministry was allowed to sign a deal with US energy company ThorCon to build a thorium reactor for power generation in Indonesia (CNN Indonesia 2020b). The president also approved the establishment of a military reserve to assist TNI in security matters and national development. Up to 25,000 reservists would get basic military training and be available for not only wartime functions but also civilian operations, such as working in the food estate, helping with disaster relief and contributing to economic development (Purnomo 2020). The education ministry later announced the commencement of university courses for students wishing to undertake military reserve training, for which they could get academic credit. The deputy defence minister, Sakti Wahyu Trenggono, confirmed that the reservists would have an economic role, not just a security role (Yahya 2020).

Although Jokowi’s expansion of TNI’s role falls far short of a return to the New Order, it nonetheless serves the military’s institutional interests while eroding democracy. Since Soeharto’s downfall, removing TNI from civilian functions and returning its focus to an external defence role has been a central element in Reformasi discourses. To a large extent, this is captured in the 2004 TNI law, which states that the military’s role does not include domestic security. But involvement in Covid-19 operations helps TNI to maintain its extensive territorial command (Koter) structure, which gives it a presence down to the village level across the country and allows access to local sources of income and influence. TNI’s Covid-19 role normalises soldiers’ interacting extensively with the community and supports the continuation of Koter and military grassroots engagement. Reformers argue that maintaining this structure is inconsistent with an externally focused, professional military (Honna 2020). By favouring coercive military measures, Jokowi is eschewing persuasive civil measures that could win public cooperation.

Aside from these pro-military policies, Jokowi has given preferment to the police and Indonesia’s main intelligence body, BIN. He has appointed a record number of police generals—more than 30 by mid-2020—to senior civilian positions in government, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and independent state agencies, such as the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). Former national police chief Tito Karnavian was appointed home affairs minister, the first police officer ever to hold this position. Another police general, Firli Bahuri, was appointed chair of the KPK upon parliament’s recommendation. According to non-government organisation KontraS, a total of 397 police officers are now in SOEs, up from 222 in 2017; more than 7% of all SOE commissioners now have police backgrounds (Koran Tempo 2020i). Commentators have noted that many of these police generals have been appointed to roles that lie far outside their expertise, calling into question their competence to perform these roles. One common explanation for their appointment is that Jokowi is rewarding them for their support during his first term and particularly during the 2019 election campaign.

BIN has also done well under Jokowi. In March 2020, Jokowi instructed BIN to ‘take steps’ to manage Covid-19, but did not specify what they were to be. Over the next few months, BIN began to directly involve itself in public health activities, including rolling out mobile rapid-testing vans and jointly funding development of a coronavirus medicine with the army and Airlangga University in Surabaya. These measures attracted much adverse comment. BIN’s testing proved unreliable, returning positive test results for dozens of people who were later confirmed to have negative results. Also, its Covid-19 medicine was criticised for not having the necessary approvals. Others noted that Law 17/2011 on State Intelligence stipulated that BIN’s role was to detect, analyse and prevent threats to national security, not to undertake a public health role (Majalah Tempo 2020).

In July, the president decreed that BIN would now answer directly to him rather than to the coordinating minister for politics, law and security affairs, Mahfud MD (Nashrullah 2020). BIN had long sought direct access to the president, and the head of BIN, Budi Gunawan, a powerful former police general with close ties to PDIP and Megawati, had bridled at answering to Mahfud, a law professor and former chief justice of the Constitutional Court, who was known to cast a critical eye over the reporting and activities of the agencies beneath him. Bypassing the coordinating minister means less scrutiny of BIN within government and a greater ability of Gunawan to influence Jokowi’s decisions on a wide range of political and social issues. As with his stance on the police and the military, Jokowi is not averse to asking the intelligence services to involve themselves in political affairs. In early 2020, he requested that the police and BIN approach social organisations and persuade them to support the government’s controversial omnibus bill, which was under heated debate in parliament (Gorbiano 2020).

This greater involvement of the military, police and intelligence in social and political affairs comes at a time when state intimidation of government critics has reached the highest levels of the post-Soeharto period. Cyberattacks and trolling of critics is now commonplace, leading to a significant squeezing of civic space. The two most notorious examples were the attacks on Ravio Patra and Pandu Riono. Ravio, a researcher and activist, was detained and interrogated by police for 33 hours in April over accusations that he had used messaging app WhatsApp to incite violence. He was released when evidence emerged that his social media accounts had been hacked and the inflammatory messages had been posted by a third party with the apparent aim of giving a pretext for his arrest. NGOs claimed that the hacking was most likely the work of state agencies, as only they had the technical capacity and political interest to undertake such an attack (Nurbaiti 2020). Similarly, Pandu, an epidemiologist from Universitas Indonesia who has been a staunch critic of the government’s Covid-19 measures, had his social media accounts hacked in August and controversial photos of him with women circulated on his network (Koran Tempo 2020k). Many observers believe that state agencies are increasingly resorting to cyber intimidation as a means of silencing dissent. It is unclear whether Jokowi is aware of or even particularly interested in these attacks, but he could certainly reduce or halt them were he of a mind to do so.

REPRESSIVE PLURALISM

There has been much debate among observers of Indonesian politics over the past decade regarding the importance of ideology. Scholars such has Ufen (2008), Slater (2004) and Aspinall and Berenschot (2019) have argued that the old ideological streams (aliran) that dominated politics from the 1950s into the Soeharto period have weakened considerably during the Reformasi period, and that personalities, clientelism and intra-elite collusion are now larger factors in determining how the electorate votes and how politicians behave. It is certainly the case that most major parties now have significant overlap in their policy settings and that only a handful of parties bother with detailed platforms based on a rigorous ideological exposition. At the 2019 general and presidential elections, the debates between parties and candidates focused heavily on identity and the qualities of individual leaders. When ideology did feature, the differences were more rhetorical than substantive. But, as Fosatti (2019) has argued, ideological divergences regarding Islam remain a significant factor in voter behaviour. His research shows that aliran continue to shape the electoral inclinations of Indonesians and that voters with Islamist orientations have different policy concerns and leadership preferences from non-Islamist voters. Indonesia’s ideological divide on religion is not, however, purely about elections; it is increasingly a contest about what limits the state should impose on Islamic discourses and organisations. According to Indonesian statutes, the only banned ideology is communism. But during the past four years of Jokowi’s presidency, the government, in concert with state agencies and an array of civil society actors, has moved to restrict hard-line Islamic views, which they regard as posing an existential threat to Indonesia’s tradition of diversity and tolerance. They are doing so in the name of pluralism, arguing that Islamists imperil religious and political freedoms and thus warrant suppression. This pluralist–Islamist cleavage has become one of the most significant fault lines of the Reformasi era and is now a critical site of contestation over the nature of Indonesian democracy. Are pluralists justified in using illiberal measures to combat the supposedly illiberal forces of Islamism?

Exactly who and what the pluralists and Islamists are needs careful elaboration before considering the repressive measures that are being undertaken. Pluralism is generally defined as an acceptance that no one religion can be the sole source of truth and that a state should acknowledge and accommodate a diversity of beliefs. In the Indonesian context, this is often cast in terms of kebhinekaan (diversity), a reference to the state motto of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity), and it holds that the religiously neutral character of the 1945 Constitution is central to Indonesia’s character. By contrast, Islamism refers to those groups and figures who seek to bring Islamic law and principles formally into the public domain. In practice, Islamists may pursue a wide variety of agendas, including advocating for an Islamic state, demanding comprehensive sharia-isation of the legal system, and publicly mobilising in perceived defence of Muslim rights and the glory of Islam. Pluralists are adamant that no one religion should have pride of place in Indonesia, ensuring that all Indonesians are equal regardless of faith. Islamists insist that their religion should be privileged, not only because it is the faith of 88% of Indonesians but also because of its deep historical roots in the archipelago. Pluralists dismiss and sometimes condemn as divisive attempts to sharia-ise the constitution and statutes. They object to mobilisation designed to force recognition of specific Muslim rights.

The range of groups in the pluralist category is broad. At its core are PDIP and Indonesia’s largest Muslim organisation, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), as well as NU’s political vehicle, the National Awakening Party (PKB)—both PDIP and NU see themselves as representing the moral centre of the nation’s pluralist traditions. Also included in this loose alliance are other mainstream parties such as Golkar, the National Democrats (NasDem), Prabowo’s Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), the People’s Conscience Party (Hanura) and the United Development Party (PPP). Supporting these parties and the broad thrust of anti-Islamism is a variety of minority religious, ethnic and sexual communities and groups that feel threatened by Islamist agendas and mobilisation.

Pluralists apply the term ‘Islamist’ to only a very specific section of what is a broad Islamist spectrum in Indonesia. Their main targets are those groups at the more conservative and doctrinaire end of the spectrum, whom they accuse of subversively seeking to Islamise the state and of eroding community harmony and trust through their pursuit of religious exclusivity. They have a special dislike of so-called transnational Islamist groups, such as the now-banned Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI), the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and the puritanical Salafists, all of whom they see as representing alien, Arabised Islamic variants that challenge and undermine local, culturally embedded forms of Islam, such as that practised by NU.

Tension between pluralists and Islamists has been mounting throughout the past two decades, but several developments in the past four years have greatly exacerbated this. The first was the massive Islamist mobilisation during the Jakarta gubernatorial election campaign in 2016 and 2017, which effectively led to the defeat of the incumbent governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok). He had seemed set for a sweeping victory until he was accused of blasphemy, sparking huge rallies in Jakarta, often accompanied by sectarian and racist vitriol from many protestors and on social media. Such was the pressure on the government that it decided to charge and prosecute Ahok; he was found guilty and jailed for two years. Emboldened Islamist groups followed up with protests on other issues and allied themselves closely with Prabowo’s 2019 presidential campaign. This mobilisation sent shock waves through the political system, especially among pluralists, who feared that the Islamists were ascendant and could bend the state to their will. The second, more general development is a belief that Islamist ideas and activism are penetrating deep into the organs of the state, resulting in the capture of whole sections of the bureaucracy, SOEs and the education system, as well as parts of the private sector. Pluralists point to surveys of public servants, teachers, and secondary and tertiary students that show a sizeable minority is intolerant of minority faiths, critical of Pancasila and desirous of Indonesia’s becoming an Islamic state or caliphate. They also cite studies revealing that mosques in government ministries and enterprises are dominated by hardliners who ensure that sermons and religious study classes put forward only radical understandings of Islam (Jakarta Globe 2020; Kabar24 2019).

These developments have persuaded the pluralists that Jokowi’s second presidential term has become a critical moment for rolling back Islamism. Not only did Jokowi and his largely pluralist coalition win the 2019 general and presidential elections, but Prabowo Subianto, the focal point of Islamist politics since 2014, suddenly abandoned his opposition coalition in July and joined Jokowi’s cabinet, leaving his Islamist supporters dismayed and in disarray. The government had already begun to press back against key Islamists after the anti-Ahok demonstrations and had been buoyed by the results. The most high-profile of the anti-Ahok leaders, Habib Rizieq Shihab of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), had been under investigation on various charges before he fled to Saudi Arabia, where he remains with his influence much diminished. Other leaders were accused of various offences, including financial mismanagement, incitement and hate speech; some were prosecuted, but others disappeared largely from public view, seemingly intimidated by the prospect of being tried and jailed. The banning of HTI in mid-2017 was another major blow to Islamists. Although not widely liked in many Islamist circles, HTI was adept at mobilisation and media campaigns, and it played a pivotal role in the 212 protests. Its banning came after insistent lobbying of Jokowi by NU and was intended as a warning to other Islamist groups (Fealy 2017). Power (2018) and Aspinall and Mietzner (2019) have provided telling accounts of the anti-Islamist push.

Over the past two years, the government has considerably ramped up its anti-Islamist efforts. The program is now more systematic and far-reaching, and much of it is conducted out of public view. Various ministers have set the tone for this by regularly warning of the dangers of ‘extremism’ and ‘radicalism’, particularly within government but also in the general community. Among the most vociferous is the religious affairs minister, former general Fachrul Razi, who from the moment of his appointment has made anti-radicalism one of his main agendas (CNN Indonesia 2019). Other ministers with strong stances against Islamism include home affairs minister Tito Karnavian, education and culture minister Nadiem Makarim, and finance minister Sri Mulyani. The government has introduced screening tests that are designed to determine whether public service applicants hold radical views. Applicants are queried on their attitudes to such things as the centrality of Pancasila to national life, the supremacy of civil law over sharia law, and the desirability of establishing a caliphate. Furthermore, managers are now instructed to look for staff who espouse ‘radical’ views or who engage in networking. Preachers at government mosques are scrutinised, as are Islamic scholars who come to ministries to conduct Quranic classes. The religious affairs ministry has begun a program to certify preachers and ensure that they convey moderate interpretations of Islam (Merdeka 2020).

More insidious are the secretive surveillance and vetting programs. University leaders, school principals, and public service and SOE executives are frequently given lists by government security agencies setting out the names of staff who are identified as ‘extremists’, often owing to the organisations that they are members of, functions that they have attended or websites that they visit. These ‘problematic’ staff members are then warned that their affiliations, actions or views are not only unacceptable for government staff but also detrimental to their future careers. Similar processes have occurred in private industry, with large corporations in strategic sectors instructed to monitor or take action against ‘hard-line’ staff members. It is clear from these lists that a large-scale surveillance operation is being conducted by state agencies, seemingly using sophisticated data-monitoring programs, as well as extensive on-the-ground reporting on targeted Islamist communities.

This campaign has now become a serious human rights issue, with probably many thousands of Islamists in the public and private sectors subject to discrimination on the basis of their religious or political views. While the government may argue that these actions are necessary to protect Indonesia’s tolerant and democratic foundations, in reality many of those targeted in these campaigns have broken no laws or regulations, and the action taken against them is arbitrary and prejudicial. A central problem is that the campaign offers only vague definitions of ‘extremist’ or ‘radical’ Islam. The term is most obviously applied to former members of HTI, which remains active underground, and to convicted jihadists. Arguably, Muslims within these two categories can justifiably be monitored, given the clear laws relating to their status. But in practice, a far wider array of Islamists is ensnared in this net. They include members and sympathisers of PKS, members of conservative predication movements such as Jamaah Tabligh (JT), and Salafists. PKS, for example, is a legally registered party and it formally renounced Islamism in 2008. It has formed part of the ruling coalition governments for 11 of the past 22 years and has had dozens of its cadre elected as governors, district heads and mayors across Indonesia. It has one of the better records of following the ‘rules’ of the democratic game and there has never been any substantial evidence of subversive intent. Nonetheless, PKS members are frequently targeted by the government’s campaign. Similarly, most JT members and Salafists dedicate themselves to proselytising and educating, and eschew political activity. There would seem no grounds on which the police or prosecutors could charge members of these communities, but nonetheless many suffer intimidation and are discouraged from freely expressing their religious and political views.

This is, in effect, large-scale social engineering designed to deter Indonesians from pursuing a conservative Islamic lifestyle and Islamist political objectives. The intent is to sufficiently pressure Islamists either to leave their positions or to relinquish their views and affiliations (or at least appear to) in order to safeguard their careers. In this regard it is repressive pluralism. The objective is not to genuinely protect and respect the diversity of doctrines and associations in Indonesia but rather to constrain it by narrowing the range of permissible expression. Although pluralists believe that they have the Islamists on the defensive and should press their advantage throughout the remainder of Jokowi’s presidency, their actions risk an Islamist backlash against the state and pluralist forces—one that could easily lead to greater future political tensions and polarisation. Further radicalisation is also a possibility. The pluralists’ optimism that they have Islamism in retreat would seem misguided. It is difficult for states to control the broader flow of public opinion and belief. If there is an organic movement within the Muslim community towards more conservative values, then states have limited ability to influence this. Jokowi has undoubtedly given his imprimatur to the anti-Islamist campaign, even if he never speaks explicitly of this in public. He has long regarded Islamism as a major threat not only to his presidency but also to national cohesion. Islamist attacks almost brought about his political defeat in the 2014 presidential election, and in 2019 he lost in most of the provinces where conservative Islam is strong. Occasionally, his statements reveal how he views political Islam, such as in 2017 when he declared that it was dangerous to combine religion and politics in Indonesia. He has also warned against those who claim that their religion or understanding of religion is best, which most commentators understood as criticism of self-righteous Islamists (Kompas 2017).

Sukarnoism is the Solution

Another front in the ideological battle between pluralism and Islamism opened up in mid-2020 when PDIP sought to pass into law a bill on Pancasila Ideological Guidelines (HIP). Officially, the bill was an attempt to provide a statutory basis for the Agency for Fostering Pancasila Ideology (BPIP), which is chaired by Megawati. The contents of the proposed legislation, however, pointed to the more ambitious purpose of seeking to place Sukarnoist ideology at the centre of the nation’s inculcation of pluralist Pancasila values. The bill set out Sukarno’s concept that the five principles of Pancasila, including the principle of belief in one almighty God, could be reduced to three principles (trisila)—social nationalism, social democracy and belief in God—which could be further distilled into the single principle (ekasila) of mutual assistance (gotong royong). The drafters of the bill also decided to omit MPR Decree 25/1966 banning communism and the Indonesian Communist Party. PDIP politicians told the media that the bill was needed to help fight radicalism and extremism (Kurniawan 2020).

The HIP bill drew an almost immediate reaction from Islamic organisations. The Indonesian Ulama Council (MUI) voiced strong objections to the bill, describing it as ‘atheistic’ and a pathway for communism’s return. It also rejected the trisila and ekasila concepts as downplaying the importance of religion and declared that it was an obligation for all Muslim members of parliament to repudiate the bill (Kumparan 2020f). More seriously for PDIP, retired senior TNI officers and NU also denounced the bill, with NU leaders fearing that it could revive old contestations between Islam and nationalism (Farisa 2020).

Tensions between PDIP and Islamists rose sharply during the year. When PDIP flags were burned by Islamist protesters in Jakarta, the party’s secretary-general, Hasto Kristiyanto, referred the matter to the police, calling it an attack on the Jokowi government. He went on to warn Islamists against ‘testing our [PDIP’s] revolutionary forbearance’ and stated that PDIP was a ‘militant party’ with genuine ‘grassroots strength’. In a thinly veiled allusion to Islamist extremism, he said that PDIP had learned from the conflicts in Yemen, Syria and Libya how to respond to such behaviour (Kumparan 2020d, 2020g). The anti-communist civil society organisation Taktis reciprocated by reporting Hasto and another PDIP parliamentarian to the police for proposing a bill that favoured communism (WartaKota 2020). Amien Rais, former Muhammadiyah chair and founder of the National Mandate Party, called the bill the work of the Antichrist (Al-Dajjāl) (DetikNews 2020). Several weeks later, a group of Islamists attempted to firebomb a PDIP office in West Java in retaliation for the actions of PDIP members in burning the image of the FPI spiritual leader, Habib Rizieq. More recently, a diverse group of Islamic leaders and government critics formed the Action Coalition to Save Indonesia (KAMI), which, among other things, sought to oppose the ‘threat to Pancasila’ posed by the HIP bill and to prevent issues of tolerance and moderation from being used as weapons against Islamic groups. The most prominent figures in KAMI were former TNI commander Gatot Nurmantyo, who has a long record of pandering to sectarian and nationalist sentiments, and former Muhammadiyah chair and intellectual Din Syamsuddin (Kumparan 2020b).

Eventually PDIP was forced to withdraw the bill and replace it with one that included the 1966 anti-communism decree and omitted the clauses on trisila and ekasila. The entire HIP bill episode was a significant and telling miscalculation by PDIP. It shed light on the party’s growing factionalism, revolving around the rivalry between Megawati’s son from her first marriage, Muhammad Prananda Prabowo, and her daughter from her second marriage, Puan Maharani. The bill had been the work of party ideologues who congregated around Prananda. Sukarnoism has an almost sacred hold on them and they regard Islamism as the abiding enemy of Pancasila (Aritonang 2020). They believe that Sukarnoist thinking offers a solution to the nation’s growing Islamic conservatism, a view shared by few outside their faction.¹ They also have no objection to cadres with family links to former communists, which may explain why the HIP bill pointedly omitted the 1966 MPR decree. Prananda and his followers were shocked at TNI’s and NU’s rejections of the bill and were left with little alternative but to backtrack. By contrast, Puan and her supporters have been more pragmatic and more concerned with political dealmaking than with waging ideological battles. It is notable, though, that significant sections of PDIP felt bold enough in the past year to directly confront Islamism, something that PDIP has not done before. The emergence of KAMI shows that the Islamists are not willing to cede ground to the pluralists, and especially to PDIP, without a fight. In this regard, the polarisation that marked 2019 has deepened.

JOKOWI’S DYNASTICISM

When Jokowi first made his run for the Jakarta governorship and then the presidency, between 2012 and 2014, one of his selling points was that he was from outside the political elites. He cast himself as a person of humble birth and a self-made man, who had worked hard to put himself through university, gain government positions and establish himself as a successful entrepreneur before entering politics as the mayor of Solo in 2005. According to this version, his career advancement had been due to merit and single-minded determination. Unlike so many in politics, he had not relied upon family connections or powerful patrons to secure opportunities for him. He was lauded as the first Reformasi-era political leader not to come from a privileged and powerful family. As such, he came to symbolise a more open and egalitarian spirit, which was meant to suffuse the new post-Soeharto political mood. Although there is much truth to this account, it needs also to be acknowledged that Jokowi attracted support from important elite figures during his rise, among them Luhut Panjaitan, the former general and Golkar politician who became one of his business partners, and Prabowo Subianto, who nominated Jokowi for governor in Jakarta.

It came as a surprise, then, to many of Jokowi’s reform-minded supporters, as well as to political observers, when in mid-2020 he gave his open blessing to his 33-year-old son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, and his 29-year-old son-in-law, Bobby Afif Nasution, to run for the mayoralties of Surakarta and Medan, respectively, in the December elections of regional heads (pilkada). Both were businessmen, with Gibran owning a medium-sized catering company and a chain of pancake (martabak) stores, and Bobby working as a marketing director for a real-estate firm. Neither of them had any direct experience in politics and they only joined Jokowi’s PDIP in early 2020 when their nomination plans were well advanced. Gibran had some public profile by virtue of being his father’s son—his gala wedding in Solo in 2015 was watched by an audience of millions—but he had no record of speaking substantively on political or social issues; Bobby was largely unknown (Hamdan 2019; Viva 2017). In order to win nomination, both would have to push aside well-established and popular local politicians who had already secured the support of their PDIP branches.

From mid-2019, the media had been reporting rumours that Gibran wanted to follow his father into politics. His intent became clear in October of that year when he visited the PDIP chair, Megawati, at her central Jakarta residence to announce his plan to nominate. She advised him to work within the party to secure the necessary support but was clearly favourably disposed to his nomination. In December, Bobby approached Prabowo and other coalition parties asking for their approval to contest the Medan mayoral election (Koran Tempo 2020a). Formal endorsement for both men did not come till mid-2020. In Gibran’s case, all of the coalition parties that hold seats in the local Surakarta legislature are supporting his nomination; Bobby has the backing of PDIP, NasDem and several other coalition parties.

Gibran’s and Bobby’s nominations have been cast by the palace as their own initiatives. The palace has also suggested that Jokowi somewhat grudgingly agreed to the nominations because to do otherwise would be to deny Gibran and Bobby their rights as citizens. Why should a president’s relatives be denied the chance of their own political careers? But it is now clear that, far from being a reluctant party in this process, Jokowi had in fact pressured family members to enter politics. Sources within the palace indicate that in mid-2019, Jokowi complained to his family that none of his children was politically active. At that point, the only one of his children who had shown an interest in politics was his youngest son, Kaesang Pangarep, but he was regarded as unready to run for public office. Eventually, Gibran agreed to seek the mayoralty of Surakarta. It appears likely that Bobby’s decision to stand was also due to family pressure, as he has looked uncomfortable in the role from the outset.

Once Gibran and Bobby had committed to nominating, Jokowi and his allies began intervening to ensure their success. This was most evident with Gibran. To be nominated by PDIP, he needed endorsement from the Surakarta branch. However, the branch had already decided to nominate Achmad Purnomo, the deputy mayor of Surakarta, and Teguh Prakosa, the Surakarta legislative speaker, and it strongly resisted pressure from Jakarta to alter its recommendations (Jakarta Post 2019). Surakarta was a PDIP stronghold and the branch was proud of its strict cadre-isation process. Purnomo and Teguh were both party stalwarts with extensive experience in municipal politics and administration. By contrast, Gibran was a political neophyte. Surakarta’s outgoing mayor and local PDIP powerbroker, Fransiskus Xaverius Hadi Rudyatmo, objected strongly to the outside intervention, souring his relations with Jokowi, whom he had once served as deputy mayor. Nonetheless, by mid-year, the branch had buckled to pressure from the central leadership, and Purnomo withdrew in favour of Gibran, grimly telling journalists that ‘when you’re up against the president’s son, what can you do?’ On 16 July, PDIP Surakarta duly announced that its new ticket for the mayoral elections would be Gibran and Teguh (Adi 2020; Retaduari 2020).

Jokowi’s next steps laid bare his determination to smooth Gibran’s path into politics. He summoned Purnomo to lunch with him at the presidential palace in Jakarta and offered him employment in the capital. Purnomo rejected this out of hand and seemed to take pleasure in later telling the press of this rejection as he left the palace (Koran Tempo 2020b). There can be little doubt that Jokowi was seeking to remove Purnomo as a possible threat to Gibran’s campaign, but his attempt backfired. Commentators criticised him for using his presidential office for party and family interests rather than matters of state. At about the same time, Jokowi’s brother-in-law Wahyu Purwanto, who was the incumbent district head in Gunung Kidul, suddenly withdrew from his re-election campaign, telling the media that the president had asked him not to run. Jokowi’s intervention seemed aimed at lessening criticism of his family’s new-found dynasticism; in effect, Purwanto’s career had been sacrificed for Gibran’s (Koran Tempo 2020g).

A similar process was undertaken for Bobby’s nomination in Medan, though with less obvious involvement by Jokowi. Bobby needed to displace a strong local candidate, Akhyar Nasution, a veteran PDIP member who had been deputy mayor of Medan since 2016 and had been acting mayor for the past year. Akhyar came under pressure from Jakarta to withdraw his nomination, and a PDIP minister was dispatched to Medan to instruct the local branch to fall in behind Bobby. Shortly afterwards, Akhyar resigned from PDIP and joined the Democrat Party, which promptly nominated him for mayor (Koran Tempo 2020d, 2020e).

Gibran’s and Bobby’s prospects appear to differ. Gibran, though prodded by his father to run, looks to be relishing the challenge. Although inexperienced in politics, he is said to be a fast learner with his father’s determination to succeed. Being Jokowi’s son will assist him powerfully in Surakarta, where his father is greatly admired. But his public statements betray a certain sense of entitlement and an inability to package his messages well. When asked, for example, if his nomination was dynastic, he said that the regional elections were a competitive process and people were not forced to vote for him, a response that suggested he was confusing dynasticism with authoritarianism (Kumparan 2020c). Bobby’s path is much harder. Akhyar is a battle-tested opponent with deep networks in Medan society and all the benefits of incumbency. Moreover, Bobby looks uncertain and half-hearted on the campaign trail.

What reasons might Jokowi have for establishing a political dynasty? After all, this strategy presents several risks, and Jokowi is a notably risk-averse politician. To begin with, his dynasticism will undoubtedly harm his already tarnished reputation as a reformer and ethical politician. A recent telephone survey found that as many as 61% of voters disapprove of political dynasties, and 58% want laws limiting the ability of an incumbent’s family members to run for public office (Straits Times 2020). On top of that, Gibran and Bobby might turn out to be political failures, with either or both not being elected or not proving to be competent municipal leaders whose careers can progress. One explanation for why Jokowi is supporting his son and son-in-law is that he has succumbed to the prevailing elite culture, which condones and facilitates the advancement of family members. The president is clearly proud of Gibran and regularly extols his achievements in business. He may well reason that his son is at least as capable as the scions of other powerful politicians who are willing to kick-start the political careers of family members. Perhaps most important of all is that Jokowi believes that Indonesia needs the kind of leadership that he is providing and that, through Gibran, he can continue to exert the kind of influence that would perpetuate the achievements of his presidency. It may even be the case that the more severe the impact of Covid-19 on Jokowi’s second term, the more he feels driven to invest in Gibran’s political future. Though appearing humble, Jokowi is not without conceit.

Jokowi’s newly minted dynasticism has implications far beyond his own family. It has, in fact, given impetus to other dynastic nominations within the governing elite. Whereas Jokowi once disapproved of relatives’ following ministers and senior officials into politics, he now has reason to encourage others in the practice so that his own dynastic turn is less conspicuous. At least five relatives of cabinet members are now confirmed candidates in the December 2020 local elections. Vice President Ma’ruf Amin’s daughter Siti Nur Azizah is a candidate for deputy mayor in South Tangerang, Banten. Another of his relatives, the television actor Adly Fairuz, is running for the position of deputy district head in Karawang, West Java. Ma’ruf was known to be hesitant to push his daughter’s nomination until Jokowi urged him to do so (Koran Tempo 2020c). Prabowo’s niece and a former member of parliament, Rahayu Saraswati Djojohadikusumo, is also contesting the election for deputy mayor in South Tangerang. The son of Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung, Hanindhito Pramana, is the endorsed PDIP candidate for the position of district head in Kediri, East Java. Agriculture Minister Syahrul Limpo’s younger brother, Irman, is a deputy mayoral candidate in Makassar.

Political dynasties have been present in Indonesian politics since the founding of the republic, but there are indications that the December pilkada are shaping to be the most dynastic of the Reformasi period. Indonesian researcher Yoes Kenawas, from Northwestern University, has estimated that 202 dynastic politicians contested local elections between 2015 and 2018, of whom 117 were successful. By contrast, only 39 local politicians in 2013 came from established political families. His preliminary count put the number of dynastic nominees in the December 2020 elections at 146. He thought it likely that in excess of 100 would be elected—more than double the 52 elected in 2015 (Kenawas 2020). Research conducted by the Indonesia Institute in Jakarta tallied 52 candidates from political dynasties. Of these, 23 were the children of politicians, 16 were wives and nine were siblings. PDIP was by far the most dynastic of the parties, with almost half of the cases (Kartika 2020).

This recent spurt in dynastic activity is about more than securing the interests of particular families; it is part of a complex web of manoeuvres and tacit deals within the governing coalition to improve the chances of its parties in the 2024 elections (Koran Tempo 2020f). In this regard, dynasticism has become an important aspect of alliance building. For example, Megawati and Prabowo have rekindled their close personal relationship over the past year as PDIP and Gerindra position themselves for a possible joint ticket between Prabowo and Puan—Megawati’s daughter and the current parliamentary speaker—for the next presidential election. Both the PDIP and Gerindra leaderships have been happy to back the candidacies of Gibran and Bobby in the expectation that Jokowi will reciprocate by supporting the Prabowo–Puan nomination in four years’ time. Whether Jokowi is indeed willing to do this is far from certain, given that polling shows the electability of the Prabowo–Puan pairing to be low compared with other candidates, such as Jakarta governor Anies, West Java governor Ridwan Kamil and Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowo. These governors are seen as dynamic and capable leaders who have managed the Covid-19 crises in their respective provinces well; by contrast, Prabowo will be 72 in 2024 and Puan has been an unexceptional politician. Jokowi seldom backs losers and he may well swing his support behind Ridwan or Ganjar rather than a doomed Prabowo candidacy.

CONCLUSIONS

The full impact of the coronavirus on Indonesia’s society, politics and economy is unlikely to be apparent until well after the pandemic has passed. The initial consequences, however, were already evident by late 2020. As in many other nations hard hit by Covid-19, democracy has regressed in Indonesia as the state has become more overbearing. This is, in part, a direct result of the severity of the public health and economic crises besetting the country as the government has scrambled to ensure social compliance with pandemic protocols while minimising the damaging economic effects of reduced community activity. But this regression in Indonesia began many years prior to Covid-19 and can thus be seen as part of a deeper process of democratic erosion wrought by political and economic elites that seek to entrench their own interests and power. Key elements of this longer-term democratic backsliding can be seen in the undermining of anti-corruption efforts, reductions in freedom of speech and association, and attempts (so far unsuccessful) to abolish direct regional elections. Over the past year, the Jokowi government has hastened democratic reversal by significantly expanding the role in public life of the armed forces and the national intelligence agency and by launching discriminatory actions and sometimes criminal prosecutions against Islamists who are deemed inimical to Indonesia’s pluralist and religiously neutral constitutional principles and traditions. In addition, pro-government sources, possibly including state agencies, have stepped up cyberattacks and vilification campaigns against critics in order to suppress opposition to government policies. To be sure, Indonesia retains its position as one of the more democratic nations in Southeast Asia, but its ranking continues to slip, particularly because of reductions in civil liberties and the criminalisation of dissent (Hicken 2020). The Covid-19 crisis has accelerated the autocratising tendencies in Indonesian politics.

Jokowi has played a key role in this process, either by commission or omission. He has been a keen promoter of greater military and intelligence involvement in civilian life, not so much because he seeks to remilitarise politics or repress society, but rather because he sees it as an efficient and effective way to implement policies that his own bureaucracy has been slow in carrying out, and also because it seems consonant with national security and stability. He has been silent on the intimidation of his government’s opponents. And he has joined the ranks of so many elite families in urging and then facilitating the path into politics of his own family members, regardless of the dynastic and nepotistic impression that this may give. Jokowi has always been a politician without a broad conceptual framework to guide him or a strong commitment to principles beyond those of fostering economic growth and development. The longer he serves as president, the more apparent the consequences of his lack of a rigorous political framework become. The Covid-19 crisis has accentuated these tendencies, bequeathing a political system that is more securitised, dynastic and subject to statist interests than that which he inherited.

Notes

1 I am grateful to Marcus Mietzner for sharing his insights into PDIP’s ideological thinking.