[GELORA45] WHY INDONESIA’S WIDODO HAD TO THROW AHOK UNDER A BUS

[Jonathan Goeij jonathango...@yahoo.com [GELORA45]]

WHY INDONESIA’S WIDODO HAD TO THROW AHOK UNDER A BUS

After his former ally lost Jakarta’s gubernatorial election three months ago, 
all signs point to the president cleaving to the more conservative power 
brokers within his party in order to surviveBY JEFFREY HUTTON15 JUL 2017 / 
UPDATED ON 21 JUL 2017


Amid the din of a few hundred protestors that he helped assemble in front of 
the main gate of Indonesia’s parliament, Cepu Supriyanto struggled to make 
himself heard by a visiting reporter.With the help of no fewer than eight 
megaphones, the demonstrators belonging to the Silent Majority, an activist 
group he founded, screamed their support for the country’s Corruption 
Eradication Commission (KPK) as legislators inside mulled a censure motion that 
could defang the watchdog panel.But Supriyanto, who was unaware of the Nixonian 
origins of the name he chose for his group, said he already had his sights on 
the presidential election still two years away.“The next election will be about 
religion. Jokowi’s mission must be to fight against radicalism and support 
secularism,” Supriyanto said, using the nickname of the country’s president, 
Joko Widodo.Jakarta's Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, also known as Ahok, was 
convicted of blasphemy for comments he made about the Koran. Photo: AFPHe may 
be disappointed. Three months after his one-time protege, Basuki “Ahok” 
Purnama, was denied re-election as Jakarta’s governor and then landed in jail, 
convicted of blasphemy, Widodo has all but jettisoned the reformist image that 
helped catapult him from a small-town mayor to head of state in two years. 
Instead, he is cleaving to the party elites he once sought to push aside, 
hoping to rely on their logistics, manpower and national networks to stay ahead 
of a voting public more conservative than he faced three years ago.“Indonesia 
is hostage to shifting public sentiment that is being manipulated by Islamic 
radicals,” said Andrew Mantong, a researcher at the Centre for Strategic and 
International Studies (CSIS), a think tank, in Jakarta.“He needs traditional 
party support.”Indonesian President Joko Widodo, left, chats with former US 
president Barack Obama at the presidential palace in Bogor. Photo: AFPThat 
decision to side with the power brokers was made in dramatic fashion in 
December when Widodo made the rounds at a prayer meeting attended by some 
500,000 at the Istiqlal Mosque, which is walking distance from the presidential 
palace. His tour guide was his nationalistic general Gatot Nurmantyo, who 
briefly broke off all military cooperation with Australia after the discovery 
of a spoof pamphlet making light of Indonesia’s founding principles, the 
Pancasila.The complaint of those assembled was against Ahok and the comments he 
made the previous September while campaigning. Islamic conservatives claim Ahok 
had insulted the Koran. His defenders say the campaign was overblown and that 
Widodo had thrown his close political ally under a bus.
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“We weren’t happy with how Jokowi handled that,” said Eva Sundari, a member of 
parliament, who belongs to Widodo’s own party, the Indonesian Democratic Party 
of Struggle (PDI-P). “He was limited in what he could do. The military was 
forcing him to act and the radicals have been growing in strength for years. 
Now they are too big to fight in one shot.”Chief among the radicals is the 
Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), a hate group that got its start when the 
military was finally eased out of its political role in the early years of 
Widodo’s predecessor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. In January, Anies Baswedan, who 
would beat Ahok in April’s poll, appealed for support from the group in front 
of its leader Rizieq Shihab, who promotes the adoption of sharia law throughout 
Indonesia.Indonesian firebrand cleric Rizieq Shihab gestures as he arrives at 
court to testify in the blasphemy trial of Jakarta's Christian governor Basuki 
Tjahaja Purnama. Photo: AFP“We don’t want to give up,” Sundari said. “We don’t 
want democracy to be hijacked.”For more than four years, Widodo and Ahok were 
an impressive, if short-lived, double act in Jakarta.While governor and deputy, 
the duo played good cop, bad cop in hot pursuit of reform and crooked 
bureaucrats. Widodo pleased crowds and smoothed feathers that might be ruffled 
by his straight-shooting deputy who got results.Police chief Budi Gunawan is a 
politically connected three-star police general with a murky financial record. 
Photo: AFPDuring that time the pair introduced free health care and education 
for the city’s poor, echoing Widodo’s achievements when he was mayor of 
Surakarta in Central Java. Later Widodo dusted off three-decades-old plans for 
the city’s above- and below-ground mass rapid transit, which will go into 
operation in 2019. After Widodo was elected president, Ahok rose to the 
governorship. Ahok put the city’s budgets as well as its tenders and 
acquisitions online, denying opportunities for kickbacks by its more venal 
bureaucrats.
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As president, Widodo has ended fuel subsidies, which ate up almost as much 
money as education spending, and kick-started a multibillion-dollar 
infrastructure-building spree.But then his taste for reform faltered and the 
currying of favour began. Within months of entering office, he nominated as his 
police chief Budi Gunawan, who is closely linked to his party’s chair Megawati 
Sukarnoputri, despite warnings a KPK probe into Gunawan’s possible corruption 
was imminent. Widodo later withdrew the nomination, but not before a firestorm 
of arrests and counter-arrests between police and graft-busters. His cabinet is 
filled with party cadres and Suharto-era generals. One, retired army general 
Wiranto, has a human rights record so awful he has been banned from entering 
the United States.Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Politics, Security and 
Law Wiranto, centre left, speaks at a press conference announcing a 
presidential decree to amend an existing law giving the government the power to 
ban radical organisations. Photo: APIn recent months Widodo overlooked two 
separate ethics committee investigations and an upcoming KPK probe into 
possible kickbacks linked to the roll-out of a new identity card to support 
Golkar party grandee Setya Novanto for speaker because he wanted his group’s 
support in parliament. Most recently, he appointed his party chief, the 
troublesome Megawati, to head a task force aimed at curbing extremism.It 
doesn’t have to be like this, said Kevin O’Rourke, who is the author of the 
weekly newsletter Reformasi. With approval ratings of well over 60 per cent, 
Widodo can easily strike out on his own. One way would be to support watering 
down election rules that require presidential candidates to have the support of 
20 per cent of parliament. Lowering the threshold would free him to shop for 
support and put distance between him and the likes of Novanto and Megawati, who 
may covet her party’s nomination for president herself, or for her daughter 
Puan Maharani, O’Rourke said.Former Indonesian president Megawati Sukarnoputri 
may have her sights set on the leadership role again. Photo: AP“There’s what he 
should do and what he will probably do. What he should do is distance himself 
from PDI-P; capitalise on his popularity to manoeuvre himself into a more 
independent position,” O’Rourke said.“What he will probably do is stick closer 
to the big power brokers because he is paranoid they will push him aside for 
one of their own.”That’s unlikely, said Sundari, who said she expects her party 
to renominate Widodo for president. Still, she said she worries the 
presidential election will be a rerun of Jakarta’s gubernatorial election.
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“We should be focusing on welfare. Instead people were focusing on morality and 
blasphemy,” she said.A tie-up with Islamic parties could also inoculate Widodo 
against charges of not being sufficiently pious, said the CSIS’s Mantong.This, 
though, may trample the individual rights of members of minorities such as the 
country’s LGBT community. A series of raids in recent months have seen more 
than 150 gay men rounded up by police.“The strategy would be to disrupt the 
link between the Islamists’ identity and political parties,” Mantong said. “At 
the end of the day this will come at the expense of freedom.”For demonstrator 
Supriyanto, such a candidacy would be a non-starter. Ahok’s ouster was a blow 
to the country’s secularist ideal, something that he and his small group have 
vowed to protect.“His loss and the verdict was beyond my imagination,” he said. 
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“We will continue to fight.” ■