Indonesian Elections
/Today, I had the luck to go to a small panel discussion at CSIS on the just-completed Indonesian elections. I know even less about Indonesia than I do about Vietnam (which is saying a lot), and so it was very interesting to me. Also, shame on me for not knowing more about the fourth largest country in the world, and the largest in ASEAN.
It sounds like the results (Joko Widodo won the presidency) were a bit different than the polls, and maybe a bit surprising in terms of trends but not in final results (Widodo was the favorite). The first speaker, Ann Marie Murphy, pointed to a few negative trends in campaigning:
The rise of Islamic majoritarianism, not just the rhetoric (which was not great), but also the fact that Widodo was forced to take on Ma’ruf Amin as his vice president. (Although, personally as an Arabic speaker and Middle East fan, I feel pretty comfortable in this sort of milieu, plus the names make sense to my ears). One interesting stat was that in 2016, 42.3% of Muslims objected to non-Muslims holding office, which is shocking. More shocking is the fact that it is getting worse: 54.6% objected in 2018. (Murphy sourced this from Mietzner).
Widodo’s response was to co-opt the Islamic movement by appointing the VP, giving patronage to the NU, and demonstrating personal piety. But he also reacted by banning an Islamist party, targeting Muslim preachers from Prabowo’s camp, and used security forces to stop anti-Joko protests. This last is especially troubling, because it is the first time that the security forces have been used in this fashion since Suharto.
The decline of political parties. There was a change in 2009 in election laws that moved parties from closed party lists to open lists. Party identification fell from 80% to 10-20% after this change. The impetus behind this was to ensure that politicians were accountable to local voters. But now without party funding, local elites (who fund the campaigns) control the politicians. Also, local bureaucrats are advantaged as well.
The other speaker, Adam Schwarz from Asia Group Advisors, was a bit more positive. His view is that Widodo has the more pluralistic, open and liberal worldview, and he won cleanly. The “more Trump-ian view of the world” held by Prabowo lost.
One point is that the Indonesian government asked all 240,000 candidates to fill out a small questionnaire with basic data (name, age, marital status, whether you have been convicted of corruption), but also to include a small personal statement on why you are running. 100,000 candidates filled it out the form, and of those 60-70,000 included a statement. But only a small minority made overt appeals to religion.
Generally, the national candidates leaned on religious rhetoric, but the local candidates did not.
On the subject of VP Amin, Widodo is very unlikely to use him much. He didn’t lean on Kalla, the previous VP, who had much more experience.
In Schwarz’s view, Widodo’s focus on infrastructure really came through in the first term. He built 10 new airports, 800km of toll roads, 100,000 kms of roads, will get to about 15gw of new power generation. He kept the deficit down (less than 3% of GDP), despite limited tax revenues. In fact, Widodo may have been too conservative (which at first glance I agree with - see my series on MMT last week).
Schwarz’s wish list for the the next term are:
Increasing the tax ratio from 9% (see my post from yesterday about Vietnam’s tax ratio, which is almost double).
Handle state enterprise growth (which have assets equal to 50% of GDP and are moving into ancillary businesses), which are starting to crowd out domestic and foreign private businesses.
Deregulate and loosen regulations to improve competitiveness.
Engage more with the global economy (Indonesia is not in the TPP)
Greater coordination and control of policy implementation (there needs to be greater focus on implementation than new policy).
There were a bunch of interesting questions from the moderator and the audience (lots of old Indonesian hands attended). The best was on Prabowo. The questioner said that he was the “biggest a$$hole” he had ever met and wanted to know if would he leave the scene after this defeat. Both speakers seems to think that Prabowo would no longer be a force, but that his vice presidential candidate, Sandiago Uno, is now well-placed. Others agree.
I think it will be interesting to see if Indonesia takes a greater leadership role within ASEAN over the next presidential term. Vietnam surely is vying for a bigger role, especially after the Trump summit. But the absence of the most populous country is noticeable.