Prabowo Subianto’s, left, next move in challenging President-Elect Joko
Widodo’s right to the nation’s highest office.
President-Elect Joko Widodo faces a barrage of potentially damaging
problems even before he officially enters office ‘United We Stand’:
Jakarta Governor Joko
Widodo has been officially declared the winner of Indonesia’s hard-fought
presidential election on July 9, and in his victory speech he called for the
country to unite after a deeply divisive election that has seen his rival,
Prabowo Subianto, challenge the decision.
Joko knows exactly how
divided Indonesian society became over the people’s decision to choose the best
political figure to lead the country for the next five years. Joko also knows
that the different political choices of the members of his opposing camp seemed
to be what caused a rift in the archipelago.
It is normal, then,
for Joko to ask the Indonesian people to unite and start with a new and
cooperative political life. To Joko, a united Indonesia will have to be based
on the continued nurturing of democracy in the country.
This would perhaps be
the most important domestic challenge Joko may face during his presidency.
As president-elect,
Joko has begun to realize that if he moves alone in leading the country for the
next five years, he can face many of the common dangers that may jeopardize the
real fabric of the country in the long term. He may experience a “bumping over
crisis and change.”
When calling the
Indonesian people to unite, and to demonstrate his serious intention of uniting
the country, Joko should have cited the story of two men trying break a bundle
of sticks: however hard they tried, neither of them could break the bundle. But
when they untied it, they had no trouble breaking the individual sticks.
The message derived
from this story is crystal clear: that a harmonious, national political life
needs to be worked out together, regardless of political orientation and
background.
If Joko can really
show his new prescriptions for reuniting Indonesia, and if his leadership can
bring the people to build mutual trust and understanding, then the country can
achieve what it wants, at least for the next five years.
What cannot be
achieved by a single soul can be achieved by the combine efforts of the masses.
Joko’s call for unity
sounds like a bright idea to start making a much better and stronger Indonesia,
but it will be difficult to achieve. His road to the State Palace will not
automatically see the disappearance of the myriad of problems the country
currently faces, from poverty and conflict over land rights to labor unrest and
religious violence and flashpoints in Papua and Aceh — not to mention the
residual problems from the presidential election.
The country’s
post-election political condition will still be in a vulnerable state as
Prabowo’s camp continues to challenge the General Elections Commission (KPU)
decision. And it’s not impossible that people will align themselves to
Prabowo’s cause suggesting a more severe, if not deadly, conflict among
society.
Perhaps, what one
fears is that the post-presidential era will witness the dawn of a tug-of-war —
a continuation of an open political, if not physical, clash between supporters
of the two opposing political camps. This may, in turn, cause an erosion of
trust and further disarray within the system.
Now that Joko has done
enough to secure Indonesia’s highest office, he must start thinking of the best
political, economic and perhaps security formulas to ensure that the country
does not fall apart. His job as leader is to convince the people that what he
will do what is best not just for the political parties that he represents, but
for the Indonesian people at large.
The public policies
Joko may initiate in the next five years will certainly be scrutinized by the
people, if not by the opposition coalition.
Joko must realize the
relatively small size of his coalition, which will control only 37 percent of
legislative seats when the new House of Representatives goes into session on
Oct. 1 — provided that the coalition led by Prabowo holds together.
This suggests the
vulnerability of his presidential position if his basic national policies fail
to garner political support from the House. The “Gus Dur fiasco” may then
repeat itself.
Whether Joko’s call
for unity is effective and whether people from all walks of life can clearly
hear his call, Joko must realize from the very beginning that a critical
weakness within Indonesian society is that its people are not strongly
motivated to achieve unity as a nation. Sometimes the public mood is far too
defensive — if not conservative — and disinclined to truly move forward.
This may lead one to
conclude the problems Indonesia faces will not disappear even if Joko is
perceived to able to maintain unity, if not a transition toward a full-fledged
democracy. The fractures within society may have already run too deep.
Joko spoke of his
aspiration for Indonesia to be an axis of global maritime trade as one of the
key policies of his economic plan for a more self-reliant and sovereign
Indonesia. But such a doctrine will certainly provide no strategic gains for
the nation if Joko fails to eventually prevent Indonesia from falling deeper
into a well of more acute problems. His call for the country to reunite would,
instead, turn into a fractured society.
If this is the case,
the expression “united we stand, divided we fall” comes to mind, suggesting the
dangerous scenario: unless the Indonesian people are united, they will fall
into pieces. In the end, one could then ask what kind of knowledge will
contribute the most to understanding Joko’s prescription for Indonesia’s
various problems in the next five years.
Bantarto Bandoro is a
senior lecturer at the School of Defense Strategy at the Indonesian Defense
University, and founder of the Institute for Defense and Strategic Research
(IDSR) in Jakarta. (Reuters Photos)
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