The Jokowi administration appears to be fixated on increasing presidential term limits rather than addressing the country’s ailing economy. Even while people are struggling with soaring prices of essential commodities, gasoline and cooking oil scarcity, more expensive meat and sugar, and a Covid-induced increase in unemployment, the debate refuses to die down.
The government’s primary responsibility is to fix these issues, but they appear to be neglected. They have been managed ineptly, and the government appears to lack seriousness in creating more jobs for its people.
Ministers seems to not doing their supposed jobs. Instead, they are busy working to advance the three-term presidency agenda while on official duties. Take, for example, Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister, Coordinating Economic Minister, Home Minister, Investment Minister, Trade Minister and Communication and Information Minister.
The Indonesian Association of Village Administrations (Apdesi) meeting attended by President Jokowi, Ministers Luhut and Tito was one blatant example of abuse of office by the head of government and his ministers in turning official duties into anti-constitutional propaganda tool for presidential term extension.
It is possible that we are going to see more events such as this (Apdesi) being “piggybacked” going forward. Various declarations by community elements are expected to emerge to further the cause. The declaration is the result of the underground movement supported by the powers currently holding office.
Unconstitutional underground movement
During the gathering held at Istora Senayan, Jakarta, Tuesday (29/3), Apdesi “Chairman” Surtawijaya stated that the association supports the idea to extend President Joko Widodo’s term in offfice. According to him, Apdesi is indebted to Jokowi who has fulfilled their aspirations, one being changing the regulation on village chief salary payment from once every three months to once a month. So, they are returning the favor. Quid pro quo. As simple as that.
However, this hides the fact that the declaration by Apdesi stemmed from an underground movement carried out by Jokowi’s top brass.
This kind of deal is certainly not good for the President and the village administrations because it violates the Constitution. This is an irony, as they are the ones who are supposed to uphold and call on the people to obey the Constitution. This is different than when civilians express their aspirations through parliament. They, of course, deserve to be heard.
Here, it is a brazen attempt to undermine the Constitution. The public sees this as a systematic effort towards presidential term extension using big data touted by Luhut as representing the will of the people.
Of course, if there is a massive effort, especially if there is a plan to declare support for Jokowi after Eid Al-Fitr, this can be categorized as an attempted violation of the Constitution. This warrants the police as law enforcement agency to prevent this plan from being carried out.
Furthermore, on March 25, there were many in Pekanbaru who were furious because they believed they had been deceived. They were invited to the Kaharudin Nasution sports complex for a cooking oil distribution. The event turned out to be a political movement to announce support for President Jokowi’s third term, rather than a social event, when coupons for basic groceries were distributed.
This will tarnish the image of the government and will serve as a bad precedent for democracy in Indonesia because this is an attempt by the government using its power to violate the Constitution. The procedural amendments seem to be merely legal mechanism, instead of democratic principle as a moral value.
In this case, Jokowi and his supporters should listen to the voice of the people who have rejected the narrative. Thus, his energy and thoughts can be focused on tackling pressing issues such as economic recovery, and the rising prices and shortage of basic necessities that make people suffer.
Playing with fire
President Jokowi and his advisers are heading on the wrong path. The optics of a group of government insiders actively carrying out underground movements in order to keep Jokowi’s administration in power for another five years are not good.
If the propaganda persists, Indonesia’s economy, social cohesiveness, and politics may be jeopardized. Indonesia is about to embark on a perilous journey into uncharted territory, rife with political and leadership issues.
The underground maneuver will engender at least three adverse effects. First, the government will lose its focus in working to overcome economic problems and health recovery brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic. This is dangerous for the government itself.
Second, civic society will lead popular unrest against the government’s authoritarian tendencies. Protests will be organized by university student executive bodies (BEM) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) around the country. In fact, the upheaval in civil society has already begun.
Hundreds of demonstrators from the Indonesian Student Executive Board (BEM SI) held a demonstration around the Presidential Palace in Jakarta on Friday (1/4). They asked Jokowi to state his position no later than Sunday (3/4). Jokowi never responded to the students’ requests.
The Indonesian Student Alliance (AMI) will stage a major protest in mid-April to protest the election’s postponement and the expansion of the presidential term to three terms. Bayu Satria Utomo, an AMI delegate and chairman of the University of Indonesia Student Executive Board (BEM UI), predicted that the demonstration would draw an even bigger crowd.
Third, the government will stoke political dissent among the coalition’s leaders and ministers from professional circles. As a result, the coalition government is less stable and more likely to fall apart.
These economic, social and political problems are the last things we need in our efforts to create the necessary stability for economic recovery. Instead, they will only create new instability that will heap more hardship on the already struggling people.
If the president is a statesman, he must stop whoever is carrying out the underground manuever and focus on accomplishing the mandate given to his administration until 2024.
An expert in psychological manipulation
The debate over postponing the 2024 elections and extending the presidential term has sparked widespread outrage. President Joko Widodo finally issued his public statement on Saturday (5/3), in which he urged all parties to obey and conform to the 1945 Constitution.
However, the President did not prevent members of his cabinet and leaders of his coalition parties from expressing their views on the idea, despite the fact that it is clearly a constitutional coup. Because we live in a democracy, anyone can propose a discourse, according to Jokowi.
President Jokowi has stated publicly four times that he will follow the 1945 Constitution. In 2022, however, he made a different statement when he should have stuck to his message from 2021, when he said that those who want a three-term presidency have three sinister motives: first, they want to humiliate him; second, they want to curry favor; and third, they want to lead him astray to his ruin.
Because President Jokowi’s statements tended to be normative, his advisers were encouraged to keep doing so. It could also be a sign that Jokowi wants to stay in power for another term. The president’s bias makes the public wonder if it fits the pattern of his other ever-changing statements, such as when he promised not to incur more debts while the country’s external debts grew during his term, on top of other inconsistencies like when he said the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway project would not use state funds but it did, and many others.
President Jokowi is an expert at manipulating public opinion. Jokowi’s approach would alter if the populace began to protest. Does this imply that he cannot remain true?
Based on these facts, it is understandable that the public is skeptical of President Jokowi’s statement that he will obey the Constitution while behind the screen his aides are allowed to continue maneuvering. This is indeed inconsistent!
Furthermore, Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung insisted that there was no budget allocated to sustain the discourse to extent President Jokowi’s term. But we cannot help but ask how these declarations were funded.
The Palace’s statement indicated that there were donations to finance the campaign. If it is not taken from the state budget (APBN), it can only mean that the declarations were funded by private sector. This indication confirms that there are large donors from the business sector who support the President who have been sponsoring him.
Lesson from Sri Lanka
Food and fuel prices skyrocketed uncontrollably as Sri Lanka is roiled by economic and political crisis. The Covid-19 pandemic has hit it hard. A developing country with a per capita income of US$3.852, more or less the same with Indonesia’s US$3.867 is facing its worst crisis since it gained independence from Britain in 1948.
Covid-19 that started out as a health crisis quickly morphed into an economic-social crisis and now a full-blown political crisis. The South Asian island nation is facing severe shortages of food, fuel and other basic necessities compounded by record inflation and long power cuts.
The Sri Lankan government has declared state of emergency, placing the country under curfew as its angry public have taken to the streets to protest rising food and fuel costs.
People who could barely survive under the government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa finally took to the streets. The opposition and the public held mass demonstrations in recent weeks to demand the president to improve the situation.
Feeling the heat, Gotabaya Rajapaksa has turned to blocking access to social media. He clearly thinks that if all social media access is restricted, the protest will die down. Big mistake, as it only inflames the situation. Waves of protest only grew bigger.
Sensing people’s anger, Sri Lankan cabinet ministers, except the president and his sibling prime minister, resigned en masse on Sunday, April 3, 2022. The incumbent president and prime minister have failed to resolve the escalating economic crisis.
What happened in Sri Lanka could also happen in Indonesia, if the Indonesian government failed to address the post-Covid economic problems and the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war.
The Sri Lankan government appears to have lost its legitimacy because it has failed to deal with the economic crisis. Meanwhile, the Indonesian government is also not necessarily competent in tackling the crisis.
While Sri Lanka does not have the issue in presidential term limits, the way the country was mismanaged which in turn caused severe economic problems, has pushed the country to the brink.
Indonesia currently looks utterly incompetent in solving its economic woes, plus there are certain quarters who dream of the return of authoritarianism by using the presidential term extension discourse. This will be much more severe than what is happening in Sri Lanka, where political crisis brews with an economic one to create a perfect storm. Hopefully it won’t come to that.
Recommendation
President Jokowi needs to give strict orders to his aides and supporters to stop the discourse on three-term presidency and focus on handling Covid-19. People are yearning for economic recovery and it is difficult for them to digest the discourse while they are distraught by the pandemic and are struggling financially.
We must admit that the Covid-19 handling in 2020 than 2021 and 2022 where there are too many inconsistent government narratives on economic recovery including value-added tax (VAT), administrative capital relocation and three-term presidency which are actually counterproductive to the health and economic recovery efforts.
The three-term presidency issue, in particular, can potentially divide the Indonesian society which should be avoided if the government is serious and consistent with accelerating the economic recovery.
If the government continues to do this kind of maneuver, it will distract its focus from various critical issues that should be at the top of the priority scale to be resolved. President Jokowi is consciously following the ambitions of those who seem determined to remain in power for much longer. Ordinary people can see that this discourse is devised to fulfill the ambition of a handful of oligarchs inside and outside the administration.
Various undertakings that show the government’s incompetence should be used as a momentum to improve its performance toward the end of the second term. People are facing hardship due to the chaotic state of the economy exacerbated by rising food and fuel prices. The government should do more to address the problems and alleviate people’s suffering.
President Jokowi’s aides and confidants should stop their threeterm presidency maneuver because not is it against the Constitution, it will also distract the president from discharging his duties and responsibilities.
The president should be firm in stopping the efforts of his subordinates because it could send him astray. He can be dragged into violating the Constitution which will be detrimental to his position. Moreover, many people have voiced their opposition to the idea. If this continues, it may lead to Jokowi’s impeachment or even spark people power movement which leads to political and national
leadership crisis as what happened in May 1998. We should be terrified at this prospect.
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Achmad Nur Hidayat graduated from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP), the Nation
al University of Singapore (NUS), and Tsinghua University in China with a Master’s Degree in Public
Policy (Economic Policy) in 2009. In 2012, he completed executive education at Harvard Kennedy
School of Government. He is a University of Indonesia graduate who served as the head of the Student Executive Body from 2003 to 2004. He worked as an analyst with the Bank Indonesia Supervisory Body for 12 years. He is also the CEO of Narasi Institute and a lecturer at UPN Veteran Jakarta.
