As President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo is nearing the end of his presidency and becoming a lame duck, it is apparent that things are becoming out of his control.
At least, the Constitutional Court’s Ethic Council does not seem to be under his control.
While the council could not cancel a ruling allowing Jokowi’s son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, to run as the running-mate of Prabowo Subianto, ex-general with close ties to the country’s former strongman Soeharto, its decision to release the court’s chief Anwar Usman, Jokowi’s in-law, from his position after finding him abusing his power in changing the election law favouring Gibran, his nephew, is a big blow to the president, indicating that his key dominos start to fall one by one.
The Constitutional Court plays a key role in elections as it tries election disputes and can determine the outcome of elections, or who or which party wins the elections.
While Anwar’s abuse of power acts should have been given harsher punishment, such as dishonourably discharged from the court, the council of ethics seems to realise the danger of giving him such a punishment, with council chief Jimly Asshiddiqie stating that discharging Anwar from the court allowed him to appeal. Such an appeal hearing will be handled by a different panel from the current one, allowing for external intervention and lengthy process, with a big possibility Anwar can be reinstated.
It is in this instance that we must appreciate the members of the council of ethics.
To further weaken Jokowi’s position and as an indication that his influence start to crumble, the council decides that Anwar will not be able to handle election cases – meaning he will not have a say in cases involving Prabowo-Gibran pair, or cases involving his other nephew, Kaesang Pangarep and his Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI), which participates in legislative election.
In fact, all his political interference or what he calls as “cawe-cawe” such as his partiality towards Prabowo and his legal engineering of forcing the court to change the election law via Usman to pave way for Gibran to run have started to backfire, are coming back to haunt him and destroying his legacy.
His decision to back Prabowo, who he thought the strongest presidential candidate, might seem a smart move initially. But this move isolated him from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the country’s biggest party which has carried him to the presidency, and turned the party, which sees him as a traitor, into his biggest enemy.
PDI-P which now carries Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowo as its presidential candidate is trying to denigrate Jokowi, Gibran and Prabowo at every turn.
The most damaging aspect of the backlash is the fact that most of intellectuals, including the so-called social media warriors, who constitute as Jokowi’s strongest supporters, and who provided him with credibility and good image as well becoming solid shield against his weaknesses, have left him or simply migrate to Ganjar’s side.
These intellectuals have apparently been either fed up with Jokowi’s lies and deception, peaking in the engineering of the Constitutional Court scandal, or realised that they can no longer milk something out of Jokowi as he is fast becoming a lame duck.
And to some extent, the police are not totally under his control either with the fact that the police are investigating anti-graft (KPK) chief Firli Bahuri, among Jokowi’s close confidants, in bribery and extortion cases. There seems to be a division within the police as while it is under the president, the police are traditionally very close with the PDI-P.
Jokowi seems to well realise that without the presidency he is nobody. That’s why he wants to hang on to power as long as possible. However, his controversial move, especially pushing his son to vice presidency, was a boiling point for many, if not most, of his strongest supporters.
Loyal intellectuals, like Andy Widjajanto, who Jokowi appointed as National Defense Institute (Lemhanas) chief, has crossed to Ganjar’s team while journalist and writer Goenawan Mohamad, founder of Tempo Magazine, openly attacks Jokowi on a daily basis, and expressed his support to Ganjar.
It seems like all of them, including PDI-P, prefers Anies Baswedan to win than giving it to Prabowo and Gibran.
As Jokowi is forcing his luck, his choice is becoming very limited. His only option for his survival is to make sure Prabowo-Gibran wins the election. And this could be very dangerous.
He is still Indonesia’s president until October next year, meaning all state’s apparatus and assets are still very much in his disposal.
The question is how low can he go? How deep will he interfere? Will he use all of it just to make sure Prabowo-Gibran wins? Whatever it takes?
This is, again, a very dangerous game, for himself and for Indonesia as a whole. And we appeal to Jokowi to not cross the line.
Fortunately, the fact that PDI-P has its own interests will more or less provide a check to whatever Jokowi wants to do. The separation of PDI-P from Jokowi is a blessing in disguise for the country.
Another factor is Prabowo. Before selecting Gibran as his running-mate, Prabowo is the candidate to beat. But all the scandals surrounding Gibran could drag him down and cost him the presidency.
But for how long will Prabowo realise that Gibran is his Achilles heel? Has Jokowi promised him otherwise?
It is our obligation to help monitor the elections while hoping and praying for a clean voting and election process, regardless who wins it, for the sake of our own future.
