Jokowi, thankfully

This week’s confirmation that Jokowi won the Indonesian presidential election is a relief. The alternative was an administration under Prabowo and his band of western-educated, elitist carpet-baggers.

Indonesia avoided the negative outcome. But it cannot be said that Jokowi guarantees a fundamental change of direction, as many foreign journalists would like to believe. Jokowi is beholden to the PDI-Struggle party of Sukarno’s daughter Megawati, and to the network of Vice President Jusuf Kalla, themselves different stripes of the Indonesian establishment.

Nor does Jokowi have a policy agenda. He stood as an ordinary person who is not corrupt. But a government that rules relatively cleanly and a little more efficiently will be nothing more than a reprise of SBY’s first term, before the ex-general’s team was consumed by corruption-as-usual.

The real game changer in Indonesia would be a manufacturing strategy that creates more semi-skilled employment opportunities and develops indigenous technological skills. An infrastructure build-out would complement this by creating demand for domestically-manufactured inputs. But such a policy shift is probably too much to expect. Since the Asian crisis and IMF intervention Indonesia has settled on a consumer-focused banking system and a proto-colonial raw material export economy. There are lots of vested interests that surround this arrangement. It would be a very big surprise if Jokowi were to upset the IMF’s apple cart.

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