One year still to go before the presidential election takes place, but five people have expressed their intention to run. Understandably, these candidates have thrown their hats in the ring. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has served two terms, is prevented by the Constitution from running again.
However, according to several pollsters, almost all of these prospective presidential candidates are not popular with the public. Some of them are weighed down by problems in their pasts such as gross violations of human rights, tax issues or large-scale environmental destruction.
Uniquely, the one candidate who has attracted public attention and support has yet to announce his willingness to run for the presidency. He is Joko Widodo, alias Jokowi, the former mayor of Solo who has been governor of Jakarta for the last nine months. The signs of a 'Jokowi surprise' can be seen in the opinion polls carried out by 10 organizations held from February to July.
Support for Jokowi is always above 20 percent, and one poll put him at 68 percent. Only the poll conducted by the National Survey Institute (LSN) showed a win for Prabowo Subianto, the former Army Strategic Reserves (Kostrad) commander, who was dismissed from the military after the May 1998 riots. However, the LSN poll did not include Jokowi as one of the answer choices.
The 'Joko-wow' phenomenon has spread quickly. Perhaps the positive public view of Jokowi arose because he wields a different style of leadership compared to other candidates. The out-and-about agenda of this Solo-born man, who lived by a river when he was a child, has not only attracted public support, his style is now emulated by other leaders. Jokowi's program is seen as being pro-poor. It is this perception that could take the Jakarta governor to the highest executive post in this nation: the presidency.
The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) should be smart enough to take advantage of this 'Jokowi effect'. Given these opinion poll results, naming Jokowi as its presidential candidate would be a 'trump card' for the party in the legislative elections, scheduled for April 9, 2014. It is not impossible that the Jokowi factor could result in the PDI-P winning 25 percent of the votes, the minimum share for a party or group of parties needed to nominate a presidential and vice-presidential candidate during the 2009 elections. With his popularity, he is believed to be able to win the majority of votes in Java, site of 60 percent of the voters.
Of course, things could change if, for example, Megawati Soekarnoputri, the PDI-P chairperson, insists on running herself, for a third time. Besides her age she is now 66 the leadership qualities of this fifth president remain unimpressive.
If the PDI-P does not nominate Jokowi, it is by no means certain that other parties will not court him. If the threshold for nominating a president remains at 25 percent of the vote, perhaps there will only be three or four candidates. And this assumes that the PDI-P, the Democrat Party and Golkar are able to increase their votes from the previous election.
More than a few people hold the view that it would be better if Jokowi continued to focus on solving Jakarta's myriad problems. He has only just started overhauling the bureaucracy, but has not yet started addressing two acute problems: traffic congestion and flooding. He is also still relatively young, 52. But we need to remember that it will take more authority than that of a governor to put Jakarta right.
For example the 'megapolitan' concept involving other provinces, and the management of water flows into the capital, cannot be implemented by the Jakarta governor alone. The same is true of the plan to relocate the capital, one possible solution to the congestion, which will have to be decided by the president and the House of Representatives (DPR). The solutions to traffic and floods in Jakarta should not have to wait for a new president.
Since the start of the reform era once again according to opinion polls perhaps only Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2004 has been able to attract as much public attention as Jokowi. If he maintains his pro-people platform, it seems it will be difficult to stop him. All that will be left to do is to find a vice president to run alongside this 'poll-winning president'. The lessons from the second term of President Yudhoyono, who seems to have been held hostage by a 'half-hearted' coalition could be used to win a wider support base in a parliament that is less susceptible to 'changing with the weather'.
Jokowi is bound to be studying this dynamic. If he has doubts about running, he needs to remember the time he was the chairman of an association of furniture companies who 'had no capital', but who managed to become mayor of Solo. He left a large paper company in Aceh because of a harsh boss, an experience that should have taught him that Indonesia needs a leader who should not have a track record of offending the people. Given that he was active in political discussions on campus, he knows that our democracy grows in the hands of a leader able to foster public participation. Democracy dies in the iron fist of a leader who forces his or her will on others. (*)
