A long and complex electoral process in Indonesia finally concluded with the >remarkable victory of Joko Widodo , who was officially declared the winner in the presidential elections. An outsider to Indonesia’s entrenched military and political establishment, Jokowi, as he is known, had never held national political office, and was unheard of until just nine years ago when he was elected Mayor of Solo, a city in central Java. In the seven years that he held office, he transformed that densely populated, run-down, crime-ridden city into a sparkling tourist destination, rebranding it as a hub of Javanese art, heritage and culture. His runaway success there led to his taking over as Governor of Jakarta in 2012 in an election that saw him unseat the incumbent, a veteran politician who had once been the treasurer of Golkar, the party of Indonesia’s military ruler General Suharto. Jakarta’s problems were more challenging than Solo’s, but Jokowi’s popularity only grew. At first it was not clear whether the Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (PDI-P), which had backed Jokowi for the Jakarta election, would nominate him for the presidential election. But after party leader Megawati Sukarnoputri stepped away from the race, his path was cleared. Jokowi and his vice-presidential running mate won 53.15 per cent of the total vote; the rival team of Prabowo Subianto, a former military general who belongs to the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), got 46.8 per cent. Citing “massive cheating” during the counting, Mr. Prabowo withdrew from the process. He has since appealed to the Constitutional Court against the verdict, but is yet to produce evidence to back his allegations of massive electoral fraud.
Jokowi’s victory is significant for several reasons. In this election, more than in previous ones, Indonesian voters have signalled that what they want is a clean break from the legacy of the Suharto dictatorship, which ended in 1998. Another country in South East Asia, Thailand, is now back under military rule. Further afield, in Pakistan, the elected government and the powerful military are still unable to disentangle their locked horns. The rise of an outsider in Indonesian politics also owes itself to a system of decentralised governance that enabled Jokowi to prove his credentials locally first, even though he still needed the aid of a mainstream political party to ascend the national stage. But the real challenge is yet to begin. The PDP-I is in an unwieldy coalition that backed Jokowi’s candidature, but even so has only 207 out of 560 seats in the House of Representatives, while the Opposition coalition has 353 seats. With national expectations running high, Jokowi will be on test from the day he takes office in October this year.
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