Jokowi S Authoritarian Turn and Indonesia S Democratic Decline

Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies
ISSN: 0007-4918 (Print) 1472-7234 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbie20
Jokowi’s Authoritarian Turn and Indonesia’s

Democratic Decline
Thomas P. Power
To cite this article: Thomas P. Power (2018) Jokowi’s Authoritarian Turn and Indonesia’s
Democratic Decline, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 54:3, 307-338, DOI:
10.1080/00074918.2018.1549918
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Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Vol. 54, No. 3, 2018: 307–338
Indonesian Politics in 2018
JOKOWI’S AUTHORITARIAN TURN AND

INDONESIA’S DEMOCRATIC DECLINE
Thomas P. Power*
Australian National University
This article examines the decline of Indonesia’s democratic institutions under President
Joko Widodo (Jokowi) ahead of his 2019 re-election bid. It argues that the latter part
of Jokowi’s first term has seen a downturn in the quality of Indonesian democracy,
associated with the continued mainstreaming and legitimation of a conservative and
anti-pluralistic brand of political Islam; the partisan manipulation of key institutions
of state; and the increasingly open repression and disempowerment of political
opposition. These trends have served to unbalance the democratic playing field, limit
democratic choice, and reduce government accountability. This article first discusses
the medium-term ramifications of the polarised 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election and
their implications for 2018’s marquee political events: a major round of sub-national
elections and the presidential nomination process. It then argues that the Jokowi
government has taken an ‘authoritarian turn’ ahead of the 2019 elections, highlighting
its manipulation of powerful law enforcement and security institutions for narrow,
partisan purposes, as well as the administration’s concerted efforts to undermine and
repress democratic opposition. Finally, it frames the 2019 election as a contest between
two candidates—Jokowi and Prabowo Subianto–who display little regard for the
democratic status quo. The declining quality of Indonesian democracy is particularly
troubling in a global context of democratic recession.
Keywords: democratic regression, authoritarianism, elections, political Islam, corruption,

presidentialism
JEL classification: D72, D73, K42
* I wish to thank Marcus Mietzner and Edward Aspinall for their advice and suggestions
on a draft version of this article, as well as Greg Fealy, Stephen Sherlock, Peter McCawley,
and the editors for their constructive comments. My thanks also go to Jacqui Baker for
her role as discussant at the 2018 Indonesia Update conference, and to Liam Gammon,
Danang Widoyoko, Colum Graham, Ray Yen, and Aulia Vestaliza for their feedback on the
presentation of the paper.
ISSN 0007-4918 print/ISSN 1472-7234 online/18/000307-338 © 2018 ANU Indonesia Project

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2018.1549918
308 Thomas P. Power
INTRODUCTION
May 2018 marked 20 years since the resignation of long-time autocrat Suharto, a
moment that paved the way for Indonesia’s widely lauded transition to democracy.
Indonesia’s political landscape experienced rapid and transformative change
following the fall of the New Order: competitive elections returned; the party system
was liberalised; restrictions on free media and pluralistic civil society were lifted; the
military’s social and political functions were abolished; independent judicial and
law enforcement institutions were established; a massive program of administrative
and fiscal decentralisation was undertaken; and direct voting for executive leaders—
presidents, governors, mayors and district heads—was introduced. Indonesia
became one of the great success stories of democracy’s third wave (Huntington 1991).
Yet, over the past decade, more sombre tones have come to characterise many
assessments of Indonesian democracy. The themes of democratic stagnation and
regression became prominent in academic analyses written during Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono’s second presidential term (Aspinall 2010; Tomsa 2010; Fealy 2011;
Aspinall, Mietzner, and Tomsa 2015). Despite some initial optimism around the
election of Joko Widodo (Jokowi) in 2014, these concerns have been even more
pronounced since he assumed the presidency (Warburton 2016; Mietzner 2016,
2018; Hadiz 2017). Leading freedom indices reinforce this generally bleak outlook.
In 2017, Indonesia’s democratic ranking suffered its most dramatic decline to date
according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (2018) Democracy Index, and it is
now clearly at risk of slipping from the category of ‘flawed democracy’ into that of
‘hybrid regime’. Incremental improvements in Indonesia’s ranking in Transparency
International’s Corruption Perceptions Index have tailed off since 2014 and, indeed,
its comparative international standing fell several places in the latest survey
(Transparency International 2018). The country’s position on the Press Freedom
Index fluctuated during the 2010s (RSF 2018), but the expansion of politically
connected ‘oligopolies’ (Tapsell 2017) ensures media remains substantially less
free and pluralistic than it was during the first decade of reformasi.
The consequences of Indonesia’s democratic deterioration were apparent in the
marquee political events of 2018: in particular, June’s simultaneous sub-national
executive elections (pilkada serentak) and August’s presidential nominations. Not
only have intolerant Islamic elements become further entrenched within the
political mainstream, but the enervation and active suppression of opposition
at the national and sub-national levels also suggest diminishing democratic
accountability. Arguably more damaging trends, however, have played out at the
periphery of the news cycle; in particular, in the partisan instrumentalisation of
constitutionally apolitical security and law enforcement institutions—the police,
the attorney general’s department, the state intelligence agency, the armed forces,
and even the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK)—by government elites,
including President Jokowi. The ongoing curtailment of expressive and associative
freedoms; the criminalisation and repression of political opponents, which further
erodes an already fragile rule of law; and Jokowi’s transparent efforts to reactivate
a partisan political role for the military in the context of an election campaign
represent major setbacks to the quality of Indonesian democracy. Indonesian civil
society appears increasingly unable to live up to its billing as ‘democracy’s most
important defender’ (Mietzner 2012). Indeed, the cleavages exposed in the 2014
election and exacerbated by the sectarian mass mobilisations of 2016–17 render the
Jokowi’s Authoritarian Turn and Indonesia’s Democratic Decline 309
safeguarding of democratic rights and freedoms secondary to an apparent struggle

over the nation’s ideological orientation.
This article investigates Indonesia’s democratic decline under Jokowi in the
context of preparations for the 2019 elections. I argue that the Jokowi government
took an authoritarian turn in 2018, making more concerted use of powerful
state institutions—particularly instruments of law enforcement and security—
for narrow, partisan purposes, including the suppression of constitutionally
legitimate democratic opposition. I emphasise the role played by President
Jokowi, his political enablers, and his coalition allies in the ongoing erosion of
democratic institutions, and frames the upcoming election as a contest between
two candidates—Jokowi and Prabowo Subianto—who display little regard for the
achievements of post-Suharto reform. In particular, I discern three major elements
in Indonesia’s democratic decline under Jokowi: the continued mainstreaming
and legitimation of a conservative and anti-pluralistic brand of political Islam;
the partisan manipulation of key institutions of state; and the increasingly open
repression and disempowerment of political opposition, reducing democratic
choice and undermining government accountability.
The article proceeds in five parts. First, I revisit the dynamics of the 2017
Jakarta election, which has been used as a strategic template for the electoral
contests of 2018 and 2019. For national-level opposition forces, the Jakarta contest
provided a strategic blueprint focused on sectarian mobilisation and identity-
based campaigning; for Jokowi and his allies, it prompted a concerted effort to
prevent the exacerbation of Jakarta-style religious and ideological polarisation
by both accommodating and repressing conservative Islamic figures and groups.
Second, I turn to the 2018 sub-national elections, which served as a testing ground
for these political strategies in the lead-up to the 2019 campaign, but which also
reinforced some troubling electoral trends at the local level. Third, I examine the
presidential nomination race. Here I consider the effects of the new simultaneous
parliamentary and presidential electoral format introduced for 2019; the difficulties
faced by opposition forces in choosing a challenger to Jokowi; the machinations
within the two coalitions that ultimately congealed behind Jokowi and Prabowo;
and the selections of Ma’ruf Amin and Sandiaga Uno as their respective running-
mates. Fourth, I argue that the Jokowi administration has taken an authoritarian
turn, going further than its post-Suharto predecessors in treating executive
offices, law enforcement institutions, and the security apparatus as tools for the
advancement of personal and partisan agendas. The president is reaching ever
deeper into the authoritarian toolbox ahead of his re-election bid, at severe cost
to Indonesia’s democratic norms and institutions. Last, I return to the broader
theme of Indonesia’s democratic decline, framing the political narrative of 2018 in
the context of broader social and ideological trends, and noting the absence of a
credibly democratic candidate in the 2019 election.
THE POST-AHOK LANDSCAPE: POLARISATON,

ACCOMMODATION, REPRESSION
The mass sectarian mobilisations of late 2016 arguably represented the nadir
of Jokowi’s presidency to date. In the lead-up to Jakarta’s 2017 gubernatorial
election, hundreds of thousands of conservative Muslims descended on the
310 Thomas P. Power
capital to protest allegedly blasphemous comments made by the incumbent

governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok), an ethnic Chinese Christian and close
Jokowi ally. After the charge of blasphemy was endorsed by the powerful, quasi-
official Indonesian Council of Islamic Scholars (MUI), Ahok’s Islamist opponents
established the National Movement to Safeguard the MUI Fatwa (GNPF-MUI)
and mounted a series of mass demonstrations demanding Ahok’s electoral
disqualification, arrest, and imprisonment. The largest demonstrations, on
4 November (‘411’) and 2 December (‘212’) 2016, seemed to herald the rise of a
new political force that came to be known as the ‘212 Movement’ (IPAC 2018).
This sectarian mobilisation decisively shaped public opinion during the
Jakarta campaign. It shifted the focus of the contest from Ahok’s strong record
of bureaucratic reform and programmatic achievement to the politics of religious
identity. The election was won in the second round by Anies Baswedan, an ethnic
Arab academic and Jokowi’s first education minister, and the energetic business
tycoon Sandiaga Uno. Anies and Sandiaga, who were nominated by Prabowo
Subianto’s Greater Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) and the Muslim
Brotherhood-linked Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), surged in the polls after
closely aligning their campaign with the Islamist movement and its organisational
leadership. Particularly in the lead-up to the second round of voting, their
Islamist allies conducted an extremely effective grassroots campaign—focused
on mosques, religious study groups, and social media—that perpetuated the
characterisation of Ahok as an enemy of Islam and emphasised the sinfulness of
voting for a non-Muslim.
The 2017 Jakarta race profoundly affected national political dynamics and had
deep ramifications for the events of 2018. While religiously charged campaigning
is not new in Indonesia, the scale, ferocity, and effectiveness of the anti-Ahok
mobilisations shocked Jokowi and became a major source of anxiety ahead of his
2019 re-election campaign. Indeed, more than any previous sub-national election,
the 2017 Jakarta race served as a proxy contest between national political leaders,
with former president Yudhoyono, Jokowi’s 2014 presidential rival Prabowo, and
Vice President Jusuf Kalla sponsoring Ahok’s political opponents. Meanwhile,
Jokowi remained closely associated with Ahok in the popular imagination: they
had risen to national prominence as running-mates in the 2012 Jakarta election;
the president had remained Ahok’s primary political patron; and—thanks in no
small part to Jokowi’s own lobbying—Ahok’s nominating parties represented
the core of the national government coalition. The protesters’ ire was directed not
only at Ahok but also at a national administration they saw as ‘anti-Islamic’ for
its failure to accommodate the political aspirations of Indonesia’s conservative
Muslim constituency, in contrast to the inclusive policies of the Yudhoyono years
(Mietzner and Muhtadi 2018). Whereas Indonesia’s sub-national elections have
tended to be animated by local political concerns (Aspinall 2011), the Jakarta
election reflected national-level cleavages among competing elite interests and
contrasting ideological orientations (Hadiz 2017).
The Jakarta result produced three major upshots for Indonesia’s broader
political landscape. The first of these was an opposition effort to consolidate
the anti-Ahok coalition into a political vehicle through which the sub-national
elections of 2018 and the presidential election of 2019 could be similarly shaped
along sectarian lines. The second involved an accommodative government
strategy focusing on the distribution of political and material concessions to

Islamic groups and leaders, leading to the further political mainstreaming of
conservative Islam at the centre of national political discourse. The third involved
the government’s use of law enforcement agencies and regulatory authority to
repress the most radical or intransigent elements of the Islamist mobilisations.
Polarisation
Political leaders in both the opposition and government coalitions imagined the
anti-Ahok campaign as a tactical blueprint that could be recycled in the sub-
national elections of 2018 and even used against Jokowi in the 2019 presidential
race. That Ahok had been defeated despite a 74% approval rating as governor
demonstrated the susceptibility of even a popular, well-performing incumbent
to a highly polarising, effectively organised, and lavishly resourced sectarian
campaign (Mietzner and Muhtadi 2018). The importance of religion in national
elections is well-established. One survey conducted in early 2018 found that
a plurality of voters considered presidential and vice-presidential candidates’
religious identity to be the most important determinant of their support. The same
survey suggested that only a quarter of voters felt their current choice of president
was final, with more than half indicating it was still liable to change (Poltracking
Indonesia 2018, 137–40). In essence, opposition forces could still reasonably hope
for an electoral swing against the incumbent, and campaigns focusing on religious
identity seemed comparatively likely to provide one. Although Jokowi shares
neither Ahok’s double-minority status nor his predilection for controversial
public statements, he was the target of religiously- and ideologically charged
smear campaigns by Prabowo supporters in 2014 (Aspinall and Mietzner 2014,
359), and his sense of vulnerability to these tactics was exacerbated by his close
association with Ahok.
In this context, opposition forces were eager to perpetuate the cleavage exposed
in Jakarta, and to strengthen a narrative constructing Jokowi’s governing coalition
as antagonistic towards the ummah. Following the Anies-Sandiaga victory,
Prabowo publicly thanked the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) for its support of
his chosen candidates, and in the months that followed, opposition leaders such
as PKS president Sohibul Iman repeatedly suggested that the ‘spirit of the Jakarta
victory’ should be ‘transmitted’ to other regions and the upcoming presidential
contest (Kumparan, 26 Dec. 2017; Jawa Pos, 9 June 2018). In April 2018, Amien
Rais—a senior National Mandate Party (PAN) figure and the advising chairman
of the Brotherhood of 212 Alumni—memorably described Gerindra, PKS, and
PAN as ‘parties of God’ for their defence of the faith against Ahok, in contrast
with the ‘parties of Satan’ that had nominated him and that formed the core of
Jokowi’s coalition (CNN Indonesia, 13 Apr. 2018).
Yet even as the opposition coalition sought to consolidate the support and
mobilisational capacity of Indonesia’s conservative Muslim constituency,
Jokowi and his coalition partners worked to subvert the potentially threatening
alliance. The government adopted two principal strategies. On one hand, the
more mainstream elements of the anti-Ahok movement were co-opted and
accommodated within Jokowi’s increasingly ‘big-tent’ coalition. On the other,
less acquiescent figureheads of the 212 Movement and Islamic groups possessing
more radical ideological orientations were met with repression.
312 Thomas P. Power
Accommodation
Although Jokowi’s published polling figures remained stable during the Jakarta
campaign, the government’s Islamic credentials were generally seen as weak
during the first half of his term. Not only was Jokowi’s inner circle dominated by
non-Muslims and perceived secularists, but the Indonesian Democratic Party of
Struggle (PDIP), of which he is a member, had also long presented itself as a bastion
against the Islamisation of national politics. Moreover, the exclusion of Islamic
organisations from government patronage was not limited to the ultraconservative
FPI and PKS; the leaders of more moderate religious organisations Nahdlatul
Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah also complained of a relative decline in state
largesse during Jokowi’s tenure. In short, with his first two years in office having
been dedicated to the construction of an effective party coalition, the president had
done little to defuse accusations from conservative quarters that his administration
was ‘anti-Islamic’.
However, following the shock of the Jakarta campaign, and fearing the
continued mobilisation of hostile sectarian sentiment, Jokowi and his coalition
partners worked assiduously through 2017 and 2018 to enhance the government’s
Islamic credibility. The first concession to conservative demands, of course, had
been the decision to allow Ahok to be charged and prosecuted on blasphemy
charges, which resulted in his sentencing to a two-year jail term. However, the
government’s broader strategy to consolidate support from Islamic groups
required a more proactive approach, involving closer attention to the material
demands of Islamic civil society at the organisational level, and the strengthening
of personal bonds between the president and leading ulama. In the words of a
prominent opposition politician:
Pak Jokowi started paying attention to the ummah after the pilkada DKI [the Jakarta
election]. Now he has adopted a strategy of embracing Muslim constituents. Because
Pak Jokowi’s greatest liability has always been [his relationship with] the ummah.1
As the largest Islamic organisation, NU has been the primary recipient of

government attention. While nahdliyin (NU members) have been well represented
in Jokowi’s cabinet since he took office, NU elites noted that most of these
appointees were cadres from the NU-aligned National Awakening Party (PKB)
rather than candidates backed by the organisation’s central board (PBNU) (Detik,
9 June 2016). In recent years, PKB has strengthened its influence within NU
by channelling otherwise inaccessible state patronage to the organisation’s
leadership. In early 2017, however, the finance ministry announced Rp 1.5 trillion
($112 million) in financial support to an NU-led microfinancing scheme (CNN
Indonesia, 23 Feb. 2017), soon followed by promises from the president that more
than 12 million hectares of land would be distributed to Islamic organisations
and pesantren (Detik, 26 Apr. 2017). NU was encouraged to put forward further
proposals for social and economic programs that could receive government
funding (though NU members grumble that the promised patronage has been
1. Interview with Mardani Ali Sera, 6 August 2018, Bekasi.

slow to materialise, meaning Jokowi is yet to ‘repay’ NU for its support during
the Jakarta protests).
Jokowi has wooed NU by symbolic means also, eagerly adopting NU’s doctrinal
pillar of ‘Archipelagic Islam’ (Islam Nusantara). As Fealy (2018a) explains, NU
has used the concept both to ‘extol the virtues of a culturally sensitive and
predominantly Javanese Islamisation process’, and as a bulwark against ‘what it
sees as Arabised forms of the faith, such as Salafism and Muslim Brotherhood-
style Islamism’. While Jokowi had shown support for the concept from the early
days of his presidency, he has been even more effusive in his praise of Islam
Nusantara in the latter half of his term, seeing it as an ideological shield against
his puritanical adversaries.
Jokowi has also invested heavily in his personal relationships with prominent
clerics. The clearest illustration of this has been the president’s fawning embrace
of Ma’ruf Amin, whose concurrent occupation of the MUI chairmanship and the
position of rais ‘aam (president) of NU make him ‘the most powerful ulama in the
nation’ (Fealy 2018b). Ma’ruf played a key role in the Islamist campaign against
Ahok: it was under his leadership that MUI deemed Ahok a blasphemer in 2016,
and Ma’ruf served as an expert witness for the prosecution during Ahok’s trial.
Indeed, Ma’ruf had been prepared to deliver the Friday sermon during the 212
demonstration, on the condition Jokowi’s attendance could be guaranteed (Jokowi
attended only at the last minute). One NU leader claims that at the height of the
anti-Ahok campaign ‘Kyai Ma’ruf was closer to the 212 Movement than he was
to PBNU’.2
Yet following Ahok’s defeat and trial, Ma’ruf was quickly transformed from a
dangerous figurehead for conservative resentment towards Jokowi into one of
the president’s closest allies. Ma’ruf was lavished with praise and patronage—
arranging meetings between the president and foreign investors (Detik, 2 Apr. 2018)
and hosting Jokowi’s launch of a sharia-based micro-credit bank at his pesantren
in Banten (OJK, 14 Mar. 2018)—and he repaid Jokowi with vocal defence of the
president’s religious, leadership, and policy credentials (Republika, 2 Apr. 2018;
SindoNews, 14 Apr. 2018; Merdeka, 11 May 2018). Though Ma’ruf was aligned with
NU’s most puritanical and ideologically conservative wing, Jokowi recognised him
as someone with whom he could do business: a canny political operator whose
career had been characterised more by pragmatism than dogmatism (Fealy 2018b).
In the words of one NU intellectual:
Initially Jokowi treated Kyai Ma’ruf as a rais ‘aam is usually treated—as a spiritual
ascetic, as someone who is hard to read. But pretty quickly he stopped doing that.
Jokowi realised that Kyai Ma’ruf is a politician too. So whatever Kyai Ma’ruf asked
for, [Jokowi] gave him. The government facilitated him. This way, Kyai Ma’ruf is
comfortable, and Jokowi is comfortable. They have become closer and closer, and
now—NU is always behind the government.3
The government’s accommodation of conservative Islamic leaders has

not been limited to those from NU. Senior 212 activists have been invited to
2. Interview, 9 August 2018.

314 Thomas P. Power
private audiences with the president (Kompas, 25 Apr. 2018). The controversial
Functional Groups Party (Golkar) politician Ali Mochtar Ngabalin—a member of
Prabowo’s 2014 campaign team and a participant in the Defence of Islam rallies—
was appointed to Jokowi’s presidential staff in May 2018 and given a lucrative
commissionership in a state-owned enterprise shortly thereafter (Kompas, 19 July
2018). These efforts have prevented Jokowi’s political opponents from maintaining
a monopoly on conservative Islamic discourse, though the corollary has been
the promotion of people who have espoused intolerant religious positions into
positions of prominence within the administration. Whether they will be able to
exert influence over the government’s ideological direction remains to be seen.
Repression
The accommodation of more mainstream and flexible segments of the conservative
Islamic mobilisation went hand in hand with the repression of its more radical and
intransigent elements. One strength of the 212 Movement had been its incorporation
of a range of ideological groupings, with traditionalist, modernist, Salafi, and Sufi
organisations joined in opposition to Ahok. However, the tensions among different
ideological streams, personal rivalries, and competing flows of patronage were
quickly exposed following Ahok’s defeat, encouraging the sort of fragmentation
typical of social and political organisations in contemporary Indonesia (Aspinall
2013). These intra-movement cleavages were exacerbated by the government’s
strategy of selective repression.
The early indications of a more coercive component in the government
response arose as early as the eve of the 212 rally in 2016, when a number
of politically peripheral figures who had styled themselves as opponents
of Jokowi and Ahok were arrested on treason charges. Shortly after, a raft
of charges was brought in quick succession against the head of FPI, Rizieq
Shihab, including those relating to an alleged exchange of lewd images with
a female follower via a private messaging service. This forced Rizieq out of
the country and into exile in Saudi Arabia, where he remains a figurehead for
FPI and a frequent host for visiting opposition politicians but has been unable
act as a fulcrum for the broader 212 Movement. The most notorious of the
government’s repressive responses came in July 2017, in the form of a decree
on mass organisations (Perppu 2/2017 tentang Organisasi Masyarakat). The
decree was meant as a tool to ban the transnational Islamist Party of Liberation
(HTI) network, which had played a prominent role in the anti-Ahok protests, but
it was designed in a way that allowed the government to unilaterally disband any
organisation deemed in contravention of the state ideology of Pancasila. It thus
abrogated the previous right of organisations to contest proposed bans through
a process of judicial review in the courts, and it consolidated the authority to
impose bans under Indonesia’s minister for legal affairs and human rights. The
decree, which parliament passed into law in October 2017, has the potential to
be used as an instrument for more widespread repression of groups deemed
hostile to the government (Hamid and Gammon 2017).
The HTI ban was actively supported by NU, which sees the Islamist organisation
as an ideological enemy. The Multipurpose Ansor Front (Banser)—the quasi-
militia affiliated with NU—marshalled efforts to break up HTI events and
has grown increasingly assertive in obstructing the activities of other groups
it considers doctrinal opponents. More broadly, the 212 Movement became

increasingly fragmented and was unable to maintain—let alone build on—the
mobilisational capacity it had demonstrated during the Jakarta campaign. A
much-publicised ‘reunion’ of 212 ‘alumni’ in December 2017, which organisers
had hoped would demonstrate the continued power of the movement, confirmed
its decline: in its last united show of force, and despite efforts at nationwide
mobilisation, only around 30,000 participants turned out (IPAC 2018).
In this way, the post-Ahok landscape has been characterised not only by the
further consolidation of conservative and majoritarian Islamic agendas within
Indonesia’s political mainstream, but also by the increased willingness of
government actors to wield the state apparatus as a tool for the de-legitimation
and suppression of oppositional and critical political expression. Worryingly,
the latter tactics—which were developed by the government in response to
the radical elements of the 212 Movement—are now being employed against
more mainstream expressions of democratic opposition. In particular, peaceful
assemblies of activists from the 2019 Change the President (2019GP) movement—
spawned from a viral social media hashtag in early 2018—have in recent months
been consistently curtailed and dissolved by police. They have also been
confronted by aggressive counter-mobilisations in which Banser members have
been frequent participants.
THE 2018 PILKADA

The 2018 simultaneous pilkada represented the biggest day of voting in Indonesian
history outside of national elections. Half the country’s 34 provinces went to the
polls, including the major demographic centres of East, West, and Central Java,
North and South Sumatra, Lampung, and South Sulawesi; elections were also
conducted in 39 cities and 115 regencies. More than three-quarters of Indonesian
voters were eligible to take part. Political elites in both the government and
opposition camps identified the 2018 pilkada as an important litmus test of the
cohesiveness of the political coalition that had defeated Ahok, and a test of the
degree to which the polarising, religiously charged campaigning that had proven
so effective in Jakarta could be recycled in other parts of the country.
Historically, analysts have perceived little correspondence between patterns
of pilkada competition and national-level political dynamics (Buehler and Tan
2007; Choi 2007; Tomsa 2009). This has changed somewhat since 2014. National-
level party administrations are more closely engaged in sub-national contests,
encouraged by the shift from staggered to simultaneous pilkada, the formalisation
of central board control over candidate selection, and an increase in nomination
thresholds, which has made coalition formation all the more complex in the
context of highly fragmented local legislatures. Top party leaders are increasingly
involved in coalition-building and nomination dynamics, they are more likely to
interpret broad patterns at pilkada, and they now speak of these elections as national
barometers of partisan support and campaign capacity.
A number of informants suggest the palace also took a closer interest in this year’s
pilkada. Jokowi had paid little personal attention to the 2015 and 2017 elections, with
the exception of the Jakarta race, where he had lobbied for PDIP’s nomination of
Ahok. This changed in 2018. Ahead of candidate registrations in January, the palace
316 Thomas P. Power
actively encouraged government parties to select ‘nationalist-religious’ tickets for

the most prominent contests, to prevent the resurfacing of religious polarisation
and sectarian mobilisation. The government coalition’s desire to avoid another
surge in identity politics seems to have had more to do with pragmatism than
principle; as one Golkar politician put it, ‘Pak Jokowi still feels sensitive to religion-
based campaigns … so as long as [Islamist mobilisers] support the “other” side,
we don’t want those tactics to spread’.4
Meanwhile, the parties that had supported Anies-Sandiaga in Jakarta—Gerindra,
PKS, and (in the second round) PAN—announced that they would seek to maintain
a stable coalition in the upcoming sub-national contests. This decision was made in
preparation for the presidential race, with PKS president Sohibul Iman describing
the 2018 pilkada as ‘a stepping stone for the 2019 elections’ (Tempo, 26 December
2017). The Gerindra-PKS-PAN triumvirate held together in several major provincial
elections, but it was quickly apparent that the broader coalition between these
parties and the Islamist organisations that led the Jakarta mobilisation had lost
the unity of purpose provided by their shared enmity towards Ahok. Elements of
the 212 Movement (and even regionally based Islamist groups) sought to build on
the political capital developed in early 2017 by playing an active role in candidate
nominations, though the parties showed little enthusiasm for these efforts. Notably,
the presidium of 212 alumni put forward a number of favoured pilkada candidates
to Gerindra, PKS, and PAN, but none received the parties’ formal recommendation.
Not only was Prabowo—the chief powerbroker in the three-party axis—
unwilling to back the Islamists’ preferred nominees, but he also showed ostensibly
little regard for the most electorally competitive candidates. In two of the biggest
contests, Prabowo preferred to promote rank outsiders whom he trusted would
remain loyal in the (unlikely) event of their election: retired general Sudrajat in West
Java, and the embittered former energy and resources minister Sudirman Said in
Central Java. In East Java, the oppositional coalition failed to agree on a candidate
altogether and belatedly parted ways in support of the two confirmed candidate
pairs (Merdeka, 11 Jan. 2018).
Islam and Politics in the Provinces

The eventual pattern of nominations in the larger provinces suggested that the
government’s strategy of ideologically mixed tickets had mostly paid off, and
that the lack of cohesion in opposition ranks and the weakness of opposition-
backed candidates had greatly reduced the prospects of a coordinated and effective
perpetuation of Jakarta-style sectarian campaigns. This was particularly apparent
in the three major Javanese provinces, which have the most plausible claim to
bellwether status given they contain almost half of the national population. East
and Central Java saw two-horse races between ‘rainbow’ tickets, all of which
featured NU members. The Central Java race was particularly noteworthy in this
regard: despite the region’s reputation as being PDIP heartland, the party and
its incumbent governor, Ganjar Pranowo, now saw an Islamic running-mate as a
necessary precaution against religiously charged campaigns. Ganjar, who had won
on a single-party ticket in 2013, selected as his deputy Taj Yasin Maimoen, son of
4. Interview, 17 January 2018.

United Development Party (PPP) grandee and influential ulama Maimoen Zubair.
As Ganjar explained:
Running with Gus Yasin [Taj Yasin Maimoen] helps prevent identity politics, such as
we saw in Jakarta, from emerging in Central Java … This is not just my preference;
it’s in line with [PDIP’s] strategy. The political situation is no longer as it was in 2013,
when I could win with Pak Heru [Sudjatmoko, a fellow PDIP cadre]. It’s now safer to
have a nationalist-Islamic [candidate pairing].5
A similar pattern arose in West Java, where the primary axis of competition
appeared to be between two rainbow tickets: the cosmopolitan and social media-
savvy Bandung mayor Ridwan Kamil and the conservative Tasikmalaya regent Uu
Ruzhanul Ulum against the incumbent deputy governor Deddy Mizwar and the
pluralist Purwakarta regent Dedi Mulyadi. Both Deddy and Uu had established
links to Islamist networks and had openly supported the Defence of Islam action.
Additionally, both candidate pairs were nominated by parties well established in
the ideological centre, apparently reducing the scope for stark polarisation.
However, the marginal opposition-backed candidates—Sudirman in Central
Java and Sudrajat in West Java—were able to make surprising electoral gains
that carried them much closer to victory than polls had predicted, despite the
efforts of frontrunners to burnish their Islamic credentials, and despite their
care to accommodate Islamic elements in their coalitions. In both provinces, the
mobilisation of Islamic networks seems to have been an important factor in this
late surge. Although Ganjar and Yasin won the Central Java election, their lead
narrowed by almost 20 points before polling day. Sudirman benefited from his
running-mate’s influence in NU, and from strong grassroots campaigning by PKS,
which highlighted Ganjar’s alleged involvement in a major corruption scandal.
Yasin’s election as deputy governor represents the first time an Islamic politician
has won executive office in Central Java (see election results in figure 1).
Islamist campaigning was even more influential in West Java, where PKS had
spent a decade in power and had long maintained a militant support base in the
province’s urban centres. Sudrajat and his PKS running-mate, Ahmad Syaikhu,
polling at between 5% and 8% only a fortnight before the election, surged past
Deddy Mizwar and Dedi Mulyadi and finished only marginally behind the winning
ticket of Ridwan and ‘Uu (figure 2). An influx of financial support—notably from
outgoing governor Ahmad Heryawan, who was seeking to boost his credentials as
his party’s preferred vice-presidential nominee6—was an important factor in this
late mobilisation. However, Islamist messaging also played a crucial role in the
dying stages of the campaign: not only was social media flooded with recorded
messages from leading conservative figures declaring support for Sudrajat-Syaikhu
but PKS cadres also returned to a proven strategy that constructs electoral choices
as part of voters’ religious obligations. Moreover, Islamist-flavoured smear
campaigns continued to circulate throughout the election. Despite a concerted
effort to ‘Islamise’ his political image, frontrunner Ridwan Kamil was still subjected
to slurs portraying him as a liberal, a Shia, and a homosexual. As Warburton (2018,
5. Interview with Ganjar Pranowo, 8 January 2018, Jakarta.

6. Interview with Mahfudz Siddiq, 7 August 2018, Jakarta.
318 Thomas P. Power
FIGURE 1 Central Java: Polling and Result (% of vote)
80
G anjar-Yasin
60
40
Sudirman-Ida
20
0
Mid-March Late May Early June Election, 27 June
(Indikator) (SMRC) (Indobarometer) (KPU)
7) writes, local observers ‘spoke of the smear campaigns as consequential, and as

being far more vicious than in previous elections’. She points out that Ridwan
responded to these smears by attempting to align himself with conservative
discourse on these issues: he distanced himself from Shiism and Christianity, and
he claimed, as Bandung mayor, he had repressed homosexuals.
Even though the elections in Java did not see a recycling of the incendiary
sectarian mobilisation seen in Jakarta, the Ahok case did have a discernible impact
on candidate and party strategies. Although the leaders of the 212 Movement failed
to build on their Jakarta success, the Islamisation of mainstream politics continued.
Even extremely popular candidates went to great lengths to enhance their Islamic
credentials, and relatively undistinguished Muslim politicians such as Uu, Yasin,
and Syaikhu discovered deepening wells of political capital. The intermixing of
religion and electoral politics in the nation’s demographic heartland appeared
stronger than ever, foreshadowing the dynamics of the presidential nominations.
Sectarian campaigning continued to prove effective in regions where these
accommodative strategies were not implemented. In the religiously diverse
provinces of North Sumatra and West Kalimantan, much starker cleavages arose
between more identifiably ‘Islamic’ and ‘secular’ candidate pairs. In North Sumatra,
a PDIP-led coalition nominated Ahok’s former deputy governor Djarot Syaiful
Hidayat and the Christian-Batak Sihar Sitorus. They faced Edy Rahmayadi, a
Prabowo ally who resigned from the Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI)
to contest the election, and local businessman Musa Rajekshah (Ijeck), on a
FIGURE 2 West Java: Polling and Result (% of vote)
50
Ridwan-'Uu
40
30 Deddy-Dedi
20
Sudrajat-Syaikhu
10
Hasanuddin-Charliyan
0
Late March Late May Early June Election, 27 June
(Indobarometer) (SMRC) (Indobarometer) (KPU)
joint-Muslim ticket. Islamist groups attacked Djarot for his association with Ahok
and his secularist-pluralist political image, and he was (falsely) accused of having
proscribed certain Islamic rituals during his brief tenure as Jakarta governor (JPNN,
13 Jan. 2018). Surveys showed Edy and Ijeck were heavily favoured by the Muslim
majority, while non-Muslims overwhelmingly supported Djarot and Sihar (Merdeka,
22 June 2018), and the demographic dynamics of this cleavage inevitably ushered
Edy and Ijeck to a comfortable victory.
The West Kalimantan election also saw the exposure of a dramatic religious and
ethnic cleavage, with the main axis of competition being between the Christian-
Dayak Karolin Margret Natasa, daughter of outgoing PDIP governor Cornelis, and
Pontianak mayor Sutarmidji, who was supported by a largely Islamic coalition.
Sutarmidji had developed close ties to the 212 Movement, patronised FPI as
Pontianak mayor, and made use of these Islamist networks during the campaign.
In May 2017, Pontianak had hosted a large FPI-led mobilisation in protest of
Cornelis’s promise to ‘expel’ Rizieq Shihab should the FPI chairman ever come
to West Kalimantan (BBC Indonesia, 22 May 2017). Sutarmidji’s Islamic coalition
prevailed by a comfortable margin, again confirming the continued effectiveness
of religiously polarising campaigns in Muslim-majority regions. While religious
and ethnic divisions have long animated elections in provinces like North Sumatra
and West Kalimantan (Aspinall, Dettman, and Warburton 2011), 2018 saw a more
pronounced confluence between these longstanding local cleavages and those that
had emerged at the national level.
320 Thomas P. Power
Uncontested Elections: The Single-candidate Phenomenon Spreads

While much media and analytical attention during the 2018 pilkada was focused
on the provincial-level elections, and particularly the political impact of sectarian
campaigns and national-level cleavages, a disturbing trend that emerged in 2015
continued to gather steam at the municipality and regency levels. This was the
phenomenon of uncontested elections, whereby only a single ticket (calon tunggal)
is nominated and runs against an ‘empty column’ (kolom/kotak kosong) in lieu of
a rival. As Lay et al. (2017) argue, the rise of such elections reflects ‘a process of
elite entrenchment’ in local politics whereby overwhelming political and financial
capital and broad elite support is captured by powerful local bosses. In some
cases, this is manifested in the assembly of all-encompassing party coalitions;
in others, it sees the legal disqualification of less well-connected or wealthy
challengers prior to the election (Lay et al. 2017). Either way, the implications
for democratic accountability at the local level are troubling.
Single-candidate elections were held in 16 of the 154 cities and regencies
that took part in the 2018 pilkada. This was up from just three such elections
in 2015 and nine in 2017. The overall proportion of elections contested by a
single ticket also increased slightly (figure 3). More disturbingly for the quality
of local democracy, however, was the increased number of voters rejecting the
only available candidate: in five elections, the empty column received more than
30% of votes.
In fact, the first case of a single ticket losing to the empty column occurred
in 2018. In this contest all 10 legislative parties had formed a single coalition
behind the candidacy of Munafri Arifuddin, a member of Vice President Jusuf
Kalla’s extended family. The incumbent mayor, Danny Pomanto, had managed
to register for re-election as an independent (an administratively difficult task),
but he was then disqualified by Makassar’s State Administrative Court (PTTUN)
and electoral commission for the implementation of several programs deemed
to unfairly advantage his campaign ahead of the election. The mayoral election
thus saw the assembly of an all-encompassing party ‘cartel’ (Slater and Simmons
2013; Slater 2018); allegations of illegal pork-barrelling by the incumbent; a
controversial legal disqualification; suggestions of national elite interference in
the contest (Makassar Terkini, 16 Apr. 2018); and a majority of voters rejecting
the single ticket. While the voter backlash is encouraging, a more dysfunctional
electoral process is difficult to envisage.
The growth of single-ticket elections reinforces the overwhelming importance
of resources to electoral politics. Papua very nearly became the first province to
hold a single-candidate election, as incumbent governor Lukas Enembe allegedly
bought off all but one of the parties in the provincial legislature. The amounts
of money reportedly distributed for this support are staggering. According to a
senior source in PDIP—the only party that did not support Lukas’s nomination—
he offered the party Rp 1.5 trillion ($110 million) for its endorsement.7 The
exaggerated material advantages attached to incumbency were an important
factor at the national level, too, in the lead-up to presidential nominations.

FIGURE 3 Single-ticket Elections: Frequency and Competitiveness (% of total elections)
12
10
0
2015 2017 2018
Proportion of elections with single ticket
Single ticket elections where empty column >30%
THE NOMINATION RACE

In the previous election cycles between 2004 and 2014, parliamentary elections
were held three months before the first round of the presidential ballot. Presidential
nomination coalitions were only organised, and candidates were only registered,
after the finalisation of parliamentary results. In 2019 a new electoral format will
be introduced, with the presidential and parliamentary elections to be held on the
same day. Whereas the 2014 presidential nominations were submitted less than
two months before the presidential election, the 2019 nominations were submitted
as early as August 2018—a full eight months from polling day.
The effects of this change of format are threefold. First, it means soon to be out-of-
date parliamentary coalitions control the presidential nomination process. Before
the government’s finalisation of regulations for the simultaneous elections, there
had been a widespread assumption that the established nomination threshold—20%
of seats or 25% of votes at the national level—would be abolished to accommodate
new and non-parliamentary parties in 2019. Instead, the government decided that
the existing nomination threshold would remain in place, with the 2014 legislative
results applied. In short, presidential candidacies are determined according to a
parliamentary composition that will be obsolete by the time the winning candidate
takes office. This is certainly a flawed mechanism, which duly provoked two
challenges in the Constitutional Court, though neither was upheld. As in 2014,
322 Thomas P. Power
therefore, no party has been able to nominate a candidate on its own, leading to
lengthy and intricate coalition negotiations. Moreover, as the right to nominate a
presidential candidate depends on 5-year-old legislative results, 6 of the 16 parties
contesting next year’s race were essentially disenfranchised during this year’s
presidential nomination process.
Second, party leaders anticipate a dramatic increase in presidential coattail effects
at the coming election. The logic here, of course, is that voters who associate their
preferred presidential candidate with a particular party will be even more likely
to vote for that party when they are casting both ballots at the same time. Several
parties have even tried to measure the probable effects: PKS internal polling, for
instance, revealed the party’s base-level support was 5%, but indicated it could
rise to 8% if a party cadre ran for vice president, and it could reach as high as 11%
with a presidential candidate.8 PDIP secretary-general Hasto Kristiyanto further
suggests that the simultaneous-casting format should ensure party machines return
to the forefront of presidential campaigning: whereas party activity had previously
diminished after legislative elections, with personal success teams and ‘volunteer’
groups picking up the slack, legislative and presidential campaigns will be more
closely interwoven now that they will be conducted in tandem.9 He expects this
will promote a closer association between Jokowi and PDIP than in 2014, improving
the party’s prospects of benefiting from a ‘Jokowi effect’.
Third, the presidential campaign will be far longer and far more expensive
than in any previous contest. In 2014 both the Prabowo and Jokowi teams spent
many times their respective official outlays of Rp 167 billion ($14.1 million) and
Rp 312 billion ($26.4 million), despite the campaign spanning just one month.
The 2019 campaign extends over a full six months. The challenge of sustaining
capital-intensive electioneering for so long poses a major challenge, particularly
for opposition candidates unable to draw on state resources. Indeed, the heavy
financial burden of running a presidential campaign has already had a clear impact
on the search for a credible challenger to Jokowi’s incumbency.
The Search for a Challenger

Over the past four years, Prabowo has remained by far the most popular of
Jokowi’s potential presidential challengers, despite the relative rarity of his
public appearances. Indeed, no other political figure has come close to matching
Prabowo’s polling numbers, which have mostly hovered between the high
teens and high twenties (SMRC 2017). However, riding high on his successful
wooing of Islamic elites and bolstered by popular support for the government’s
crackdown on fringe Islamist groups, Jokowi entered 2018 with his electability
at record levels (Indikator Politik Indonesia 2018).
Unsurprisingly perhaps, Prabowo showed little of the energy and ambition
that had characterised his preparation for previous presidential bids in 2009 and
2014. For much of the year, the only enthusiastic assurances of his intention to
stand came from Gerindra functionaries who had built their political careers on
their chairman’s coattails, and who saw his continued presidential ambitions as

9. Interview with Hasto Kristiyanto, 11 August 2018, Jakarta.
vital to their political relevance. A Tempo cover story in January, which suggested
that Prabowo was priming himself for a third run at the presidency, relied
almost entirely on assertions from Gerindra party cadres (Tempo, 14 Jan. 2018).
At Gerindra’s National Coordination Meeting (Rakornas) three months later,
Prabowo announced to his party faithful that he was prepared to run but only
‘in the event that Gerindra instructs me to do so’. This was a revealing turn of
phrase, given Prabowo is the only person in Gerindra capable of issuing such
an instruction. As Gammon (2018) noted, ‘Prabowo’s language … [left] the door
wide open for other scenarios that might remain on [his] mind’.
Two such scenarios were of particular relevance. On one hand, Prabowo left
open the possibility that he could nominate an alternative candidate, much as
Megawati Sukarnoputri had done with Jokowi in 2014. The most plausible options
were Anies Baswedan, only recently sworn in as Jakarta governor, and Gatot
Nurmantyo, the recently replaced TNI commander, whose political ambitions,
aggressive rhetoric, and authoritarian proclivities had much in common with
Prabowo’s. The second option was to stand as Jokowi’s vice president. Indeed, the
Rakornas was held amid a series of clandestine negotiations between Prabowo
and Jokowi’s top political fixer, Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs
Luhut Panjaitan, over the possibility of such a joint ticket. These discussions
only collapsed, it seems, when the two men failed to agree to terms regarding
the appropriate distribution of cabinet posts. Nonetheless, for a brief period in
2018, political observers could not rule out the possibility that the single-ticket
phenomenon, hitherto confined to the regions, might eventuate at the national
level too.
It is important to point out, though, that the difficulties around locating an
electorally viable and committed opposition nominee did not reflect the absence
of oppositional sentiment within the Indonesian electorate.10 With the fracturing
of the 212 Movement, dissatisfaction with the Jokowi government manifested
elsewhere—particularly in the 2019GP phenomenon. Through the first half of
2018, 2019GP evolved from a Twitter hashtag into a political vehicle with a strong
social media presence, its own branded clothing and merchandise, and a formal
organisational structure. While 2019GP lacks the overtly Islamist character of the
212 Movement, both groups draw support from similar constituencies and share
an underlying raison d’être of agitation against an incumbent rather than support
for a specific challenger. Indeed, the 2019GP movement’s simplistic message—
which boils down to ‘anyone but Jokowi’ (asal bukan Jokowi)—positioned it as a
vehicle that could work for any eventual opposition candidate. This flexibility
reflected uncertainty among opposition leaders regarding Prabowo’s desire to
stand: even four days before nominations closed, 2019GP organiser Mardani Ali
Sera said that ‘Anies Baswedan is the man to beat Jokowi’.11
10. On social media, Jokowi’s supporters and opponents have adopted satirical nicknames
for one another: ‘tadpoles’ (Jokowi keeps frogs in the palace grounds), and ‘bats’ (Prabowo
supporters ‘see things upside-down’).
324 Thomas P. Power
Coalition Machinations
At the PDIP National Working Meeting (Rakernas) in February, Megawati
formally announced her party’s renomination of Jokowi for a second term. PDIP
joined Golkar, PPP, the National Democrat Party (Nasdem) and the People’s
Conscience Party (Hanura) in having publicly declared an intention to renominate
the incumbent. This meant only two cabinet parties, PKB and PAN, remained
undeclared for Jokowi. The NU-linked PKB had strongly supported Jokowi in
2014 and its chairman, Muhaimin Iskandar, saw in the government’s efforts to win
over Islamic constituencies an opportunity to press his claims to Jokowi’s vice-
presidential slot. Through 2017 and 2018, Muhaimin organised a lavish advertising
campaign that referred to him as a ‘Vice Presidential Candidate 2019’, but that did
not explicitly indicate PKB’s preferred presidential nominee (suggesting the party
was amenable to an offer better than Jokowi’s). Jokowi had little interest in running
with Muhaimin but did not openly rebuff his advances, instead publicly musing
on the merits of other NU figures, such as Ma’ruf Amin, PBNU chairman Said Agil
Siroj, and PPP chairman Romahurmuziy.
The preference of influential PAN figures for Prabowo was relatively clear
through much of the year. The party’s founder, Amien Rais—who continues to
exert significant influence at the grassroots—was particularly hostile towards
Jokowi, memorably accusing him of ‘bullshitting’ (‘ngibul’) about a program of
land certification and redistribution (Detik, 20 Mar. 2018). Again, the shift to a
simultaneous format was clearly a factor in PAN’s calculations, as the party pushed
the vice-presidential credentials of its chairman, Zulkifli Hasan.
Prabowo’s most dependable coalition partner, PKS, had even more reason to seek
a vice-presidential ticket. Long seen as Indonesia’s most organisationally coherent
party, PKS has been riven by internal conflict since the ousting of its previous
leadership axis in late 2015, and it has also been locked in a two-year legal battle
with the People’s Representative Council (DPR) deputy speaker Fahri Hamzah,
who continues to occupy his influential position despite being sacked from the
party in 2016. Not only did PKS’s current leaders anticipate electoral advantage
from a vice-presidential ticket, but they also saw it as a tangible achievement to
present to a fractured member base. In late 2017, the party held a nationwide survey
of its members to assess support for various candidates, then—to ensure the party’s
less popular structural leaders were represented,12 and to present a smorgasbord
of options to its coalition partners13—recommended nine of its most prominent
politicians for a presidential ticket.
Yudhoyono’s Democrat Party (PD) loomed as the potential spoiler in these
intra-coalition negotiations. PD had three major advantages over the other parties
seeking an executive nomination. First, despite heavy losses in the 2014 election,
it still controlled the fourth-largest DPR caucus, and could conceivably act as
the fulcrum of a third presidential ticket. Second, it had an electorally attractive
candidate-in-waiting in Yudhoyono’s son Agus. Despite his first-round defeat in the
Jakarta election, Agus had embarked on a nationwide ‘political safari’ and enjoyed
widespread recognition. Indeed, surveys indicated his electability was the highest
12. Interview with Mahfuz Siddiq, 7 August 2018, Jakarta.

13. Interview with Jazuli Juwaini, 17 January 2018, Jakarta.
among all party-affiliated candidates, apart from Jokowi and Prabowo. Third,
Yudhoyono’s decade in power had allowed him to build up considerable campaign
coffers and extensive financial networks, and he indicated a willingness to shoulder a
heavy financial burden during the campaign if his dynastic objectives were fulfilled.
The Jokowi-Ma’ruf Ticket

Even casual observers of Jokowi’s presidency can appreciate that from the early
days of his first term, he has kept a close eye on re-election. Like his predecessor,
Yudhoyono, Jokowi has developed a keen—almost obsessive—interest in opinion
surveys, and political pollsters have been frequent visitors to the palace over
the past couple of years. It is therefore unsurprising that one of Jokowi’s key
concerns over the past year has been to identify a vice-presidential nominee
able to enhance his electoral appeal. Indeed, palace insiders have for months
identified electability—rather than administrative expertise, personal chemistry,
or ideological orientation—as the overriding criterion in Jokowi’s selection of a
running-mate. According to one such source, Jokowi was even open to running
with the ambitious and obstreperous former TNI commander Gatot Nurmantyo
if it secured him the greatest electoral advantage.14
Jokowi has also been eager to avoid the situation he faced in 2014, when—as
a newcomer to the national political arena—he struggled to assert himself over
his party sponsors. The party elites who supported his nomination—particularly
Megawati and PDIP—forced him to accept Jusuf Kalla as his running-mate,
controlled large portions of his campaign funding, and claimed veto power over his
cabinet appointments (Aspinall and Mietzner 2014, 357–8, 365). These experiences
were a source of severe frustration for the president.
It was therefore deeply ironic that Jokowi’s eventual running-mate was neither
the most electable candidate available to him, nor the nominee of his choice. Dozens
of names were mooted as possible vice-presidential nominees through the first
half of 2018, but by the last weeks before the nomination, the palace had narrowed
the candidates to five. These included Moeldoko, a Yudhoyono-appointed TNI
commander who had been made Jokowi’s chief of staff at the start of the year;
Chairul Tanjung, a pribumi-Muslim business tycoon and media mogul; Mahfud MD,
a former Constitutional Court chief justice and former defence minister, with close
links to NU; and Ma’ruf Amin. The fifth option was Jusuf Kalla, whose candidacy
hinged on a dispute in the Constitutional Court regarding whether a third vice-
presidential term was permissible.15 As this case was unresolved by the nomination
deadline, Kalla was out of the running.
By the time nominations opened, Jokowi had settled on Mahfud. Although he
had chaired Prabowo’s campaign team in 2014, he possessed strong credentials:
he was widely respected, ideologically moderate, and had remained untainted by
scandal during two decades in the public eye. A May 2018 survey asked 93 ‘opinion
leaders’16 to assess various prominent public figures according to their administrative
capability, empathy, integrity, acceptability, and stabilising influence; only Mahfud
14. Interview, 10 January 2018, Jakarta.

15. Kalla served two terms non-consecutively.
16. They included public commentators, intellectuals, researchers, and media editors.
326 Thomas P. Power
and Jokowi scored highly in every category (SMRC 2018). Moreover, Mahfud offered
more to Jokowi’s polling numbers than other candidates; simulations of a Jokowi-
Ma’ruf ticket, by contrast, slightly reduced Jokowi’s electoral appeal.
By the evening of 8 August, two days before nominations closed but ahead of any
formal announcement, Mahfud’s name began circulating in the media as Jokowi’s
preferred vice-presidential candidate. Yet it quickly became apparent that all was not
well with the president’s coalition. Following a meeting with Muhaimin and Ma’ruf,
PBNU chairman Said Agil publicly stated that Mahfud was not an NU cadre—an
assertion rejected by many NU activists—and said that NU would not be supporting
either side in the presidential election. PBNU board member Robikin Emhas added
that ‘if the vice-presidential candidate is not an NU cadre, nahdliyin will feel no moral
obligation to work for [Jokowi’s] success’ (Detik, 8 Aug. 2018).
Nonetheless, Jokowi proceeded to assemble his coalition partners on 9 August,
with the intention of rubber-stamping Mahfud’s nomination. The parties initially
supported Mahfud, but several—including PDIP—quickly reversed their position
following a few hours of intensive politicking. Even as Jokowi prepared to unveil
Mahfud as his running-mate, his coalition backers withdrew their endorsement.
Party leaders hoping to nominate their own cadres at the end of Jokowi’s second
term in 2024 felt their prospects would be threatened by Mahfud’s relative youth—he
is 61—and preferred Ma’ruf, who is 75. Some also see Mahfud as ‘anti-party’ and
overly proximate to ‘pro-Ahok’ volunteer groups.17 Moreover, party elites resented
Jokowi’s assumption that he could present his choice as a fait accompli. As one senior
coalition figure put it:
We had a pact with Pak Jokowi that any VP nominee would be agreed to by all coalition
members before any announcement was made. Socialising Pak Mahfud [as VP] before
such an agreement had been reached would be a breach of that pact; it would mean
disregarding a principle of our coalition.18
Ultimately, Jokowi abandoned his preferred nominee in the face of this pressure
from his coalition partners and announced to a surprised press pack that Ma’ruf
Amin would be his running-mate. Ma’ruf, who was not at the announcement,
responded by thanking Jokowi for ‘respecting Islamic scholars and respecting NU’
(Detik, 9 Aug. 2018).
Jokowi’s last-minute change of mind serves only to reignite old questions about
his weakness when dealing with party elites. In delaying his declaration of a vice-
presidential candidate, Jokowi had hoped to prevent defections from his coalition.
Ironically, it was PKB—which Jokowi had worked hard to keep on side—that
most strongly rejected Mahfud and demanded Ma’ruf’s selection. That Jokowi was
spooked by threats that PKB and NU would withdraw their support demonstrates
that his deep insecurity around issues of Islamic identity has not abated. Moreover,
there can be little doubt that Jokowi’s acceptance of Ma’ruf was a disappointment
to many pluralist supporters who are sympathetic towards Mahfud and have not
forgotten Ma’ruf’s central role in Ahok’s trial.

The Prabowo-Sandiaga Ticket

July saw two significant developments in the opposition camp. First, the National
Movement to Safeguard the Fatwas of Islamic Scholars (GNPF-U; effectively a
renamed GNPF-MUI) staged a national ‘gathering of Islamic scholars’ (Ijtima’
Ulama) for the purpose of selecting its preferred presidential and vice-presidential
nominees to lead an ‘ummah coalition’ (koalisi umat) (Tempo, 27 July 2018). Its
presidential recommendation went to Prabowo, and two names were put
forward for the vice-presidential ticket: the young ultraconservative cleric and
212 campaigner Abdul Somad; and the Yudhoyono-era social affairs minister
and paramount leader of PKS, Salim Segaf al-Jufri. Second, after Yudhoyono’s
earlier efforts to pitch Agus as a running-mate for Jokowi fell through, he instead
approached Prabowo. The day after GNPF-U made its declaration, Yudhoyono
concluded an apparently productive meeting with the Gerindra chairman by
announcing that ‘we have come to an understanding: Prabowo is our nominee
for president’ (Kompas, 30 July 2018). Finally, the uncertainty over Prabowo’s
willingness to stand started to dissipate.
While PD insisted that it was not pressing for Agus’s vice-presidential
nomination, few observers were in any doubt that this was Yudhoyono’s goal.
This presented Prabowo with a dilemma. Money had become a major problem
for him since 2014, and a shortage of funding was one of the major reasons for
his hesitancy about a third presidential bid.19 Embracing Yudhoyono and running
with Agus would, presumably, ease some of his financial difficulties. On the
other hand, such a move would alienate his Islamic backers in PKS, PAN, and
the GNPF-U. Indeed, PKS and PAN seemed to believe Prabowo would accept
Agus as his running-mate, and intensified communication with PKB and Golkar
about the possibility of nominating Gatot or Anies. During a live shoot of political
talk show Mata Najwa, PKS politician Aboe Bakar al-Habsyi barked this bigoted
analogy in rejection of ex-soldier Agus: ‘You can’t have a military-military ticket!
That’s a same-sex relationship; that’s LGBT!’
The infighting among Prabowo’s coalition was far more public, and the
sense of chaos far more palpable. However, unlike Jokowi, Prabowo ultimately
stood firm against the demands of his coalition partners and would-be allies.
He chose to end his dalliance with Yudhoyono rather than acquiesce to his
dynastic ambitions, stared down both PKS and GNPF-U by refusing to run
with Salim Segaf, and rejected the overtures of PAN chairman Zukifli Hasan.
Prabowo instead took a running-mate from within Gerindra, settling on Jakarta
deputy governor, Sandiaga Uno, only hours after Jokowi announced Ma’ruf.
Sandiaga’s personal wealth (he funded 80% of the campaign costs in Jakarta,
by the reckoning of one senior source) has helped to alleviate one of Prabowo’s
biggest weaknesses: campaign financing and logistics. His candidacy also worked
around the stalemate among Prabowo’s coalition allies, all of which sought to
prevent a second party winning a place on his presidential ticket (and therefore
a comparative advantage in the coattail stakes). When Prabowo and Sandiaga
19. According to a senior source in the Anies-Sandiaga campaign team, Prabowo was not
even able to cough up Rp 4 billion ($300,000) during the Jakarta election. He would have
considered this a pittance five years earlier.
328 Thomas P. Power
submitted their nomination in a Gerindra-themed parade, it was with the backing of

PKS, PAN, and PD. Meanwhile, despite the absence of an ‘Islamic’ candidate on his
ticket, many in Prabowo’s Islamist support base adopted the refrain that it is ‘better
to support a president chosen by ulama than an ulama chosen by the president!’.
JOKOWI’S AUTHORITARIAN TURN

Several insightful analyses of Jokowi’s approach to the presidency have been
advanced since he took office. These have mostly focused on his overriding
preoccupation with domestic economic development, his lack of interest in
reformist politics, and the short-sighted, reactive nature of his decision-making.
Baker (2016) describes him as a developmentalist president who exhibits
‘impatience with legal complexity’ and ‘illiberal tendencies’ consistent with his
petit bourgeois class origins. Warburton (2016, 309) develops this picture of Jokowi
as a developmentalist, noting his government’s ‘statist-nationalist ideological
orientation’, which sees the maintenance of a strong state and stable political
landscape as essential for the achievement of economic goals. This echoes
Muhtadi’s (2015, 362) assessment that ‘Jokowi seems to think of non-economic
sectors as secondary, or as mere instruments for improving the economy and
people’s welfare’. These analyses are compelling; they suggest that the progressive
political aspirations attached to Jokowi in 2014 were misplaced, and that he is
willing to disregard democratic principles of political pluralism, expressive
freedoms, and due process when he believes they may inhibit his economic
agenda. Where Jokowi has acted in an illiberal or anti-democratic manner, it has
been the product of narrow political sensitivities, short-term thinking, and ad
hoc decision-making.
But as Jokowi reaches the end of his first term, it is appropriate to reflect further
on his approach to the presidency and its implications for Indonesian democracy.
Perhaps spooked by the prospect of a Jakarta-style sectarian campaign in 2019,
Jokowi’s haphazard approach to dealing with political challenges has created
some very dangerous precedents for Indonesian democracy. Efforts to consolidate
his political position have started to encroach upon fundamental democratic
norms and, indeed, on core achievements of Indonesia’s reform era. In 2018 we
saw mounting evidence that the Jokowi government was taking an authoritarian
turn, accelerating the deterioration of Indonesia’s democratic status quo. Largely,
this stems from the government’s consistent efforts to obtain narrow, partisan
benefit from the political instrumentalisation of key institutions of state, and the
manipulation of civil society cleavages.
The politicisation of legal and law enforcement institutions is not a new
phenomenon in Indonesia. The complexity of legal regulations and the ubiquity
of criminality—particularly corruption—have long provided a means for
powerful patrons to control and manipulate their political subordinates. However,
government efforts to use legal instruments in this manner have become far more
open and systematic under Jokowi. The warning signs of this shift were evident
in Jokowi’s first cabinet appointment, when Nasdem politician Muhammad
Prasetyo was named attorney general (a post traditionally reserved for a non-
partisan appointee). Almost immediately, the office moved to undermine the
then majority opposition coalition by arresting a number of opposition party
members on corruption charges.20 As Muhtadi (2015, 365) observes, these arrests

demonstrated Jokowi’s inclination to ‘use state instruments to warn the opposition
against destabilising his administration’.
Further erosion of the opposition coalition was achieved in 2015–16, when the
Ministry of Law and Human Rights used its control over the legal verification
of party boards to manipulate factional splits within Golkar and PPP, and to
eventually force them into the governing coalition (Mietzner 2016). The flurry of
arrests of government critics on the eve of the 212 rally (on treason charges that
were quietly dropped once the crisis had passed), as well as the criminal cases
brought against several leading clerics in the 212 Movement, similarly confirmed
the degree to which Jokowi and his political advisors saw law enforcement
institutions as a tool with which to tame oppositional forces. In early 2017, Hary
Tanoesodibjo—media mogul, opposition benefactor, and Indonesian Unity Party
(Perindo) chairman— switched his allegiance to Jokowi after police charged him
with the intimidation of a public prosecutor; his case has made no progress since.
Beyond the tactical use of prosecutions to tame opponents, Jokowi has issued new
legal powers to proscribe civil society organisations. The mass organisations decree
issued in mid-2017 served to abrogate ‘almost all meaningful legal protections of
freedom of association’ (Hamid and Gammon 2017), adding another repressive
instrument to the government’s burgeoning toolkit.
The deployment of law enforcement for political purposes continued in 2018,
yet it took on a more sinister character. The pro-Prabowo opposition coalition
of 2014–15, which sought to roll back direct elections and monopolise sites of
patronage within the legislature, possessed a discernibly illiberal character and
anti-democratic objectives (Aspinall and Mietzner 2014). Similarly, the anti-
Ahok campaign was founded on a deeply intolerant, majoritarian agenda, which
threatened the religiously pluralist foundations of Indonesian democracy, with
groups such as HTI openly demanding the democratic state be replaced with a
theocratic one. The Jokowi government employed repressive strategies to respond
to these political opponents in an approach that could credibly be described as
‘fighting illiberalism with illiberalism’ (Mietzner 2018).
In the lead-up to the 2019 election, however, the government has turned these
repressive strategies against opposition forces that work within the boundaries
of the democratic status quo. By directing the institutions of security and law
enforcement against democratic opposition, Jokowi has overseen a blurring of
the lines between the interests of the state and those of the government. These
policies represent a deliberate and increasingly systematic effort to impede and
enfeeble the legitimate opposition essential to democratic systems. Three elements
of particular relevance are the use of legal threats to control opposition politicians;
police suppression and curtailment of opposition groups; and the president’s
moves to employ the police and military as campaign instruments.
20. Indonesia’s attorney general has the power to conduct investigations, make arrests,
and conduct prosecutions in relation to ‘extraordinary crimes’, which include graft crimes.
330 Thomas P. Power
Legal Coercion of Opposition Politicians

Through the middle of 2018, a number of high-profile, opposition-affiliated regional
leaders announced their support for Jokowi. The widespread view in elite circles
was that government actors had threatened these individuals with legal charges,
typically relating to corruption, unless they realigned with the incumbent. The
most prominent of these defectors was Zainul Majdi (known as TGB)—a former
West Nusa Tenggara governor, influential cleric, and PD member— who had
led Prabowo’s regional campaign team in 2014, supported the Defence of Islam
protests, and been named as one of the 212 Movement’s preferred presidential
nominees. In late May, the KPK announced it might investigate TGB’s suspected
involvement in graft relating to the sale of shares in mining giant Newmont’s Nusa
Tenggara operation (CNN Indonesia, 7 June 2018). In early July, TGB announced
his support for Jokowi’s re-election, much to the chagrin of the 212 Movement
and other opposition leaders, several of whom accused him of looking for legal
protection (Merdeka, 9 July 2018). TGB’s successor as West Nusa Tenggara governor,
PKS politician Zulkieflimansyah—whose name had also been mentioned in
connection with the Newmont case—displayed a photo of himself with Jokowi
on his WhatsApp profile and intimated to party colleagues his preference for
the incumbent.21
The pattern of influential opposition-backed regional executives realigning with
the national government has been repeated across the country. In North Maluku,
the PKS cadre and incumbent governor Abdul Ghani Kasuba left his party after
insisting on running with PDIP in the 2018 pilkada. In Papua, too, governor Lukas
Enembe—who has been implicated in multiple corruption scandals during his
tenure—announced his support for Jokowi after winning re-election as a PD
cadre. In July, Tjahjo Kumolo, the home affairs minister, claimed that West
Sumatra governor and PKS functionary Irwan Prayitno—another member of
Prabowo’s 2014 success team—had realigned in a similar fashion, declaring ‘Pak
Jokowi lost heavily in West Sumatra [in the 2014 presidential election], but now
the governor supports him’ (Kompas, 10 July 2018). By September 2018, Jokowi’s
coalition claimed to have the support of 31 out of 34 governors, and 359 out of
514 mayors and district heads (Tempo, 28 Sept. 2018). The view that these political
defections were motivated by threats of criminal prosecution has widespread
currency in elite circles. As one intelligence and security sector analyst put it:
Opposition parties are anxious now. Criminalisation is much more systematic. In the
SBY [Yudhoyono] era, corruption cases tended to be acted upon in a more immediate
and less partisan manner. Now the government sits on them and uses them for political
leverage.22
These ‘criminalisation’ efforts were most frequently attributed to the attorney

general’s department, which handles a far larger number of corruption
investigations and prosecutions than the KPK. The department’s activities are
almost entirely opaque: unlike the KPK, it does not publish information about

its ongoing investigations, and it has the authority to open and drop cases at its
own discretion. One PDIP functionary described the attorney general’s office
as a ‘political weapon’ that is now routinely used by the government to control
opposition politicians,23 and is used by Nasdem to coerce sub-national executives
into joining the party.24
The KPK also appears increasingly compromised under Jokowi. The high-
profile prosecution of notorious Golkar and DPR chairman Setya Novanto in late
2017 for his role in the electronic identity card (e-KTP) scandal was lauded as a
triumph for the agency, but the KPK was also accused of succumbing to political
interference after the names of several high-ranking PDIP politicians previously
implicated in the case were removed from Novanto’s indictment (Tirto.id, 15 Dec.
2017). No high-profile PDIP politicians have been named suspects by the KPK
since the current group of commissioners was appointed in December 2015.25
This is unlikely to be coincidental: State Intelligence Agency chief Budi Gunawan,
who is believed to exert substantial influence among KPK agents recruited from
the police force, is a close ally of PDIP chairperson Megawati.
Harassment of Grassroots Opposition

The use of corruption cases for political leverage is not the only way in which
the state apparatus is being wielded by the Jokowi government for partisan
advantage in the lead-up to 2019. Over the course of 2018, the police have stepped
up efforts to repress the 2019GP movement, with vocal support from government
politicians and the president himself.
Multiple legal justifications—all of which rest on dubious interpretations of the
group’s objectives, as well as the laws on free speech, free association, and political
campaigning26—have been mounted in support of the crackdown. In March,
the national police announced that they were investigating the singer-turned-
activist Titi Widoretno (Neno) Warisman on the suspicion that her creation of a
WhatsApp group using the ‘2019GantiPresiden’ tag may contravene the Electronic
Transactions Law, or even constitute grounds for treason charges (Tribunnews,
20 March 2018). In the middle of the year, 2019GP organisers received frequent
reports that police were confiscating merchandise from sellers and intimidating
people who displayed the hashtag. In June through August, scheduled 2019GP
events in Serang, Bandung, Pekanbaru, Surabaya, Pontianak, Bangka Belitung,
Palembang, Aceh, and other parts of the country were prohibited or broken up
by the police, often with the assistance of pro-government ‘counter-protesters’.
Following the police disbandment of the Surabaya event, Luhut argued that
2019GP activities should indeed be banned to avert social discord and clashes

24. A sizeable number of regional heads joined Nasdem in 2017–18. For instance, during
a brief trip by Nasdem chairman Surya Paloh to Southeast Sulawesi in March, three local
regents shifted allegiance to his party.
25. As of October 2018.
26. Note that the General Elections Commission (KPU), the General Elections Oversight
Board, and a number of independent legal experts have deemed 2019GP a legitimate
constitutional movement.
332 Thomas P. Power
between pro-government and opposition demonstrators (Kompas, 27 Aug. 2018).

The newly established Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI), which presents itself
as a force for progressive, democratic politics, also supported the movement’s
suppression on the grounds it was ‘directing hatred at the president’ (Detik, 27
Aug. 2018).
Another element of the government’s crackdown on 2019GP has been its
characterisation of the organisers’ motivations as anti-system, extremist, and
caliphal (Tempo, 29 Aug. 2018). Social media messages even circulated claiming
(incorrectly) that one of the suicide bombers responsible for the devastating attack
in Surabaya in May had been a 2019GP supporter. In response to such allegations,
the 2019GP logo was amended in the first half of the year to read ‘2019: Change the
President by Constitutional Means’. Nonetheless, during a televised discussion of
2019GP, palace spokesperson Ali Mochtar Ngabalin asserted that the movement
represented ‘an order to change the president by any means in 2019’, with PDIP
politician Adian Napitupulu adding that 2019GP activists aimed to overthrow the
institution of the presidency rather than defeat Jokowi electorally (Mata Najwa, 5
Sept. 2018). Both claims were entirely without evidence. In the words of 2019GP
founder, Mardani:
Our events and activities have been consistently obstructed by the authorities. Usually
we are given some technical reason, but there is clearly a political motive behind this.
… We have made it very clear that we want to change the president by constitutional
means—that means democratically, through an election! But the government, using
the state apparatus, is stopping us from exercising our democratic rights and accusing
us of all sorts … With the election approaching, the political situation has changed.
Now it seems the authorities are under instruction to obstruct and legally sanction the
president’s critics. People must think twice before voicing criticism of or opposition
towards Jokowi… Do not underestimate Jokowi. Despite his innocent face, he is a
politician to be feared.27
Mobilisation of the Security Services

Concerns have grown during Jokowi’s presidency about the re-emergence of
a ‘dual function’ within the military, including through the consolidation of
its territorial command structure and the renewed involvement of the army in
government-led social and economic programs (IPAC 2016). In 2018, having
appointed an ally as the new TNI chief and strengthened his personal influence
within the armed forces, the president went even further in encouraging the
re-politicisation of the TNI. In June, Jokowi announced a major and immediate
increase in funding for the TNI’s village-level commands (Babinsa) (Tempo, 6 June
2018). In July he delivered a speech to Babinsa officers in Makassar, instructing
soldiers at the village level to put a stop to the spread of ‘hoaxes’ such as those
associating him with the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) (Detik, 29 July 2018);
this echoed his earlier instructions to police to ‘hunt down and deal firmly with
those who spread lies and hoaxes’, which may otherwise ‘cause the break-up of
the nation’ (Tribunnews, 6 Mar. 2018). In August Jokowi made another speech

in which he instructed police and military officers to promote his government’s

programmatic achievements at the community level:
In relation to government programs, the work that we have carried out—I ask all officers
to go and socialise this to the community. Pass on these [achievements] whenever the
moment is right to do so (Tempo, 24 Aug. 2018).
One of the major achievements of the Yudhoyono years was the acceptance by
TNI elites that ‘the military was an executive tool of the administration’ rather
than an autonomous political force in its own right (Mietzner 2009, 296). Yet
Jokowi seems prepared to use this tool in service to partisan goals, in the context
of a general election campaign. Not since the fall of the New Order have the
military and police been deployed in a systematic manner to deliver political
advantage to the incumbent government. Should these trends indeed take hold
in 2019, it will mark another step in the severe unbalancing of the playing field
between government and opposition—a feature associated not with democracy,
but rather with electoral authoritarianism and regime hybridity (Levitsky and
Way 2002, 52–3).
The Authoritarian Turn in Context

Two factors in particular have enabled the Jokowi government to encroach on
democratic norms, with surprisingly little civil society pushback. The first is the
inconsistency between formal legal regulations and established norms of political
behaviour. Institutionalised public sector corruption did not disappear with the
collapse of the Suharto franchise (McLeod 2010). The probability that almost every
prominent politician is legally compromised lends a veneer of legitimacy to the
coercion of opponents. Important restrictions on democratic expression have
never been entirely dismantled, either. For example, the police have the power
to refuse authorisation for public assemblies—such as 2019G events—and thus
render them unlawful. Nonetheless, the Jokowi government has proven far more
transparent than its predecessors in seeking to derive political advantage from the
manipulation of illiberal regulations and a weak rule of law. This instrumental use
of law enforcement and security institutions may in part reflect Jokowi’s lack of
faith in the reliability and effectiveness of political parties, social organisations, and
‘volunteer’ groups. Whereas his interactions with parties, political elites, and civil
society organisations have frequently been fraught, harnessing the state apparatus
has proven effective in overcoming political challenges.
A second enabling factor in Jokowi’s authoritarian turn is the absence of a
credibly democratic alternative. The spectre of a more avowedly authoritarian
Prabowo presidency looms large, and many pro-democracy activists curb open
criticism of Jokowi lest it benefit his strongman rival. When contrasted with
Prabowo’s poor human rights record and openly autocratic rhetoric, Jokowi’s
indifference towards democratic norms and institutions may indeed be the lesser
of two evils for Indonesian democracy activists. Prabowo’s proximity to puritanical
Islamist organisations has provided an equally powerful reason for his rejection by
moderate civil society. Indeed, it seems that many moderate activists are willing
to accept repressive government policies if they are construed as a crackdown on
the forces of intolerant Islamism. Notably, although many of Jokowi’s pluralist
334 Thomas P. Power
supporters were unhappy at Ma’ruf’s vice-presidential nomination, the repression

of political opponents has attracted little criticism from mainstream civil society
groups, media organisations, or the progressive intelligentsia.
Nevertheless, Jokowi has not baulked at embracing intolerant Islamic elements
ahead of his re-election campaign. Prioritising political calculation over any
consistent ideological agenda, the president has rapidly retreated from his calls
in early 2017 to ensure the separation of religion and politics (Kompas, 24 Mar.
2017), and by August 2018 had accepted an icon of conservative Islam as his
vice-presidential running-mate. Not only has Jokowi undermined established
democratic norms for the sake of political expediency, but he has also not objected
to the manipulation of identity politics when it serves his short-term political
interests. Government power-holders have actively encouraged the mobilisation
of groups such as Banser against Jokowi’s political opponents, be they radical and
anti-system organisations such as HTI or constitutionally legitimate movements
such as 2019GP. Political smear campaigns targeting issues of religious identity
were (mostly) the preserve of the Prabowo coalition in 2014 and the anti-Ahok
alliance in 2017. However, these strategies are now employed by both camps,
ensuring the continued mainstreaming of sectarian identity politics. This pattern
should concern Indonesian democrats and pluralists, as it places the political rights
of minority groups in an increasingly precarious position.
CONCLUSION: INDONESIA’S DEMOCRATIC DECLINE

As 2018 began, the ramifications of the divisive 2017 Jakarta election were still playing
out. An opposition-Islamist axis sought to build on the mobilisational capacity it
had demonstrated in Jakarta, targeting the sub-national elections of 2018 while
aspiring to success in the 2019 presidential contest. In response, the government
worked to enhance its Islamic credentials, wooing major Muslim organisations and
prominent clerics, and pushing for the nomination of ideologically mixed tickets
at the 2018 pilkada. It supplemented these accommodative and cooptative efforts
with the continued repression and criminalisation of the more radical segments of
the 212 Movement.
The government’s strategy to fragment the 212 Movement proved broadly effective
in the 2018 pilkada, aided by the failings of the opposition coalition. Nonetheless,
conservative Islam was further consolidated within the political mainstream.
Popular pluralist candidates were no longer confident of their electoral prospects
unless paired with an ‘Islamic’ running-mate. Where religious polarisation did
resurface—as in North Sumatra, West Kalimantan, and even West Java—the use
of sectarian-themed campaigns by Islamist coalitions continued to prove effective.
Meanwhile, some contests saw a very different problem for democracy: single-
candidate elections in which political competition was absent.
These patterns were not limited to the sub-national level. The search for a
challenger to Jokowi was arduous: though Prabowo was always the frontrunner,
he lacked the capital and vim that had underpinned his 2014 campaign. Yet, when he
did run, it was on his own terms: he selected his own running-mate and dragged his
coalition into line. Jokowi, despite months of careful preparation leading up to the
nominations, succumbed to threats from NU and pressure from his coalition and—
as in 2014—had a vice-presidential candidate forced upon him. Should Jokowi win a
second term, Ma’ruf may prove a merely decorative vice president—but his selection
by the nominally ‘pluralist’ Jokowi-PDIP coalition again reinforces the continued
political mainstreaming of conservative Islam. An even more sinister threat to
Indonesian democracy, however, is the increasingly systematic instrumentalisation
of state institutions in service of political agendas, and the repression of democratic
opposition. The democratic playing field is now as uneven as at any time since the
collapse of the New Order.
Writing shortly after Jokowi’s inauguration, Aspinall and Mietzner (2014, 366)
described the 2014 election as ‘the most important in the history of post-Soeharto
democracy’. They continued:
Neither the 1999 contest between Megawati and Abdurrahman Wahid nor the 2004 and
2009 races between Megawati and Yudhoyono were about the fundamental direction of
the country. In contrast, the choice between Jokowi and Prabowo presented Indonesian
voters with the option of maintaining the existing democratic polity or sending it on a
path of populist experimentation and neo-authoritarian regression.
It is difficult to frame the 2019 contest in the same stark terms. To be sure, Prabowo
gave every indication in 2014 that he intended to deliberately and determinedly
wind back Indonesian democracy; by comparison, Jokowi’s concessions to
authoritarianism have been incremental, and haphazard—as Warburton (2016,
299) says of Jokowi’s presidency more broadly, they have been ‘defined by ad
hocery’. Yet he now seems to have settled on a formula for overcoming political
challenges, which largely revolves around the application of the most reliable and
effective instruments available to the president—the institutions of the state. Most
concerningly for the quality of democracy in Indonesia, Jokowi and his government
have come to treat law enforcement and security services as tools for the repression
of opposition, be it illiberal and anti-system, or democratic and constitutional.
Of course, the more these strategies are normalised, the more readily available
they will be to a Prabowo-style president who harbours ideological hostility towards
democracy. Already, Prabowo supporters respond to allegations about their leader’s
authoritarian objectives by pointing to the democratic regression overseen by
Jokowi. In the words of one Gerindra politician:
Some say Prabowo is authoritarian. What about this government? Hasn’t democracy
retreated during Jokowi’s term? Isn’t it the current president who has criminalised
opposition, outlawed mass organisations … [and] used the state apparatus against his
critics? Who is authoritarian?28
Indonesian democracy has proven resilient over 20 years. As next year’s elections
approach, that resilience will again be tested. It is worth reflecting on what has
changed since the previous election cycle. As in 2014, the 2019 election will be a
two-horse race. As in 2014, we will have on one side a candidate who styles himself
as strongly nationalistic, anti-leftist, pro-military, and open to further encroachment
of conservative Islamic agendas into the national political arena. His record on
the preservation of human rights, his regard for core democratic principles, his
28. Interview with Arief Poyuono, 8 August 2018, Jakarta.

336 Thomas P. Power
commitment to transparent and accountable government, and his support for a

meaningful anti-corruption agenda are all highly dubious. He will be contesting the
presidential election with the support of a grand coalition of parties, a strong grip on
the media, and an assembly of political elites whose own democratic and reformist
credentials should inspire little confidence from the Indonesian electorate. And
on the other side of the presidential ballot paper, we will have Prabowo Subianto.
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ISSN: 0007-4918 (Print) 1472-7234 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbie20

Jokowi’s Authoritarian Turn and Indonesia’s

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Indonesian Politics in 2018

JOKOWI’S AUTHORITARIAN TURN AND

Keywords: democratic regression, authoritarianism, elections, political Islam, corruption,

ISSN 0007-4918 print/ISSN 1472-7234 online/18/000307-338 © 2018 ANU Indonesia Project

safeguarding of democratic rights and freedoms secondary to an apparent struggle

THE POST-AHOK LANDSCAPE: POLARISATON,

capital to protest allegedly blasphemous comments made by the incumbent

strategy focusing on the distribution of political and material concessions to

As the largest Islamic organisation, NU has been the primary recipient of

1. Interview with Mardani Ali Sera, 6 August 2018, Bekasi.

The government’s accommodation of conservative Islamic leaders has

2. Interview, 9 August 2018.

it considers doctrinal opponents. More broadly, the 212 Movement became

THE 2018 PILKADA

actively encouraged government parties to select ‘nationalist-religious’ tickets for

Islam and Politics in the Provinces

4. Interview, 17 January 2018.

5. Interview with Ganjar Pranowo, 8 January 2018, Jakarta.

FIGURE 1 Central Java: Polling and Result (% of vote)

7) writes, local observers ‘spoke of the smear campaigns as consequential, and as

FIGURE 2 West Java: Polling and Result (% of vote)

Uncontested Elections: The Single-candidate Phenomenon Spreads

7. Interview, 11 August 2018.

FIGURE 3 Single-ticket Elections: Frequency and Competitiveness (% of total elections)

Proportion of elections with single ticket

Single ticket elections where empty column >30%

THE NOMINATION RACE

The Search for a Challenger

8. Interview with Mardani Ali Sera, 6 August 2018, Bekasi.

12. Interview with Mahfuz Siddiq, 7 August 2018, Jakarta.

The Jokowi-Ma’ruf Ticket

14. Interview, 10 January 2018, Jakarta.

17. Interview, 11 August 2018.

The Prabowo-Sandiaga Ticket

submitted their nomination in a Gerindra-themed parade, it was with the backing of

JOKOWI’S AUTHORITARIAN TURN

members on corruption charges.20 As Muhtadi (2015, 365) observes, these arrests

Legal Coercion of Opposition Politicians

These ‘criminalisation’ efforts were most frequently attributed to the attorney

21. Interview, 6 August 2018.

Harassment of Grassroots Opposition

23. Interview, 7 August 2018.

between pro-government and opposition demonstrators (Kompas, 27 Aug. 2018).

Mobilisation of the Security Services

27. Interview with Mardani Ali Sera, 6 August 2018, Bekasi.

in which he instructed police and military officers to promote his government’s

The Authoritarian Turn in Context

supporters were unhappy at Ma’ruf’s vice-presidential nomination, the repression

CONCLUSION: INDONESIA’S DEMOCRATIC DECLINE

28. Interview with Arief Poyuono, 8 August 2018, Jakarta.

commitment to transparent and accountable government, and his support for a

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