WSJ – As Indonesia’s presidential election in July approaches, many of the country’s most keen political observers have identified Jakarta’s new governor, Joko Widodo—affectionately called “Jokowi”—as the leading contender. Some have even declared him to be virtually unstoppable in his march to the presidency. They may be in for a shock.
There’s no question that Mr. Widodo is popular and competent. A former teak furniture entrepreneur with a degree in forestry, he joined Megawati Sukarnoputri’s opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) in 2005, and won election as mayor of the Central Java city of Surakarta. He then was hand-picked by Ms. Megawati to challenge an entrenched incumbent Jakarta Governor and surged to victory in 2012.
In both posts, Mr. Widodo has earned a reputation as an honest, pragmatic and hands-on politician with deep appeal especially among those tired of Indonesia’s largely recycled set of senior politicians. National surveys show him with as much as 45% of voter support, compared with just 12% for the next most popular potential candidate.
Polls also show PDI-P leader Ms. Megawati’s popularity has fallen down into the single digits. Having served as president from 2000-04, she lost elections in 2004 and 2009 to current President Yudhoyono. This year seems like the perfect time for Mr. Widodo to ride the core support of the still-strong PDI-P to victory.
Yet Mr. Widodo is largely unproven as a national politician. Running even a sprawling metropolis like Jakarta is no match for the complexity of managing the armed forces and police, or overcoming an obstreperous legislature representing the vast and culturally diverse provinces of the Indonesian archipelago.
An even more fundamental issue stands in Mr. Widodo’s way: While most pundits assumed that Ms. Megawati would step aside before this summer’s election, the daughter of Indonesia’s founding president runs the PDI-P like a family enterprise and is unlikely to abandon her deeply held view that Indonesia’s leadership is her calling. Over the holidays, first-hand accounts emerged of a meeting between Ms. Megawati and Mr. Widodo in which she told the governor that she would run for president and asked that he join the ticket as vice president.
Ms. Megawati is apparently hoping that Mr. Widodo’s popularity will catapult her into the presidency. This arrangement won’t clip Mr. Widodo’s political wings, she argued, because it would enable him to be the PDI-P presidential candidate in 2019, at which point he could serve two consecutive five-year terms.
For his part, Mr. Widodo has precious few options beyond showing public fealty to his party leader while hoping that someone else can talk Megawati out of running again. His carefully crafted image of a loyal protege and his careful observance of Javanese customs mean any move away from PDI-P would be seen as an act of extraordinary disloyalty. If none of the PDI-P senior party members is able to gently dissuade Ms. Megawati, the likely outcome is a painful and unnecessary loss for the PDI-P.
Ms. Megawati’s gambit would benefit Prabowo Subianto, a former general and now-divorced son-in-law of the late President Suharto. Although running a distant second in opinion polls, Mr. Prabowo is a favorite among voters seeking a strong and decisive character. They argue that he has the chops to hold back Islamic fundamentalists and return a sense of decisiveness and strength to Indonesia’s presidency after a decade of equivocations and power-sharing. [Click here for full article…]
Indonesia Forward 