Economic Concept of Presidential Candidates Relatively the Same
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JAKARTA, KOMPAS – The two pairs of presidential and vice presidential candidates in the 2019 presidential election, Joko Widodo-Ma\'ruf Amin and Prabowo Subianto-Sandiaga Uno, offer relatively similar economic concepts, namely maintaining growth and promoting economic equality. The concept they offer also tends to focus on attracting the sympathy of the people.
"In other words, all pairs promise populist policies, such as asset redistribution, reform of the national social security system, and increasing the minimum wage and purchasing power of the people," the head of the economic department of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Yose Rizal Damuri ,said in a public discussion themed "The Direction of the 2019-2024 Economic Development: Assessing the Ideas and Initiatives of Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidates" in Jakarta on Thursday.
During the discussion, the Jokowi-Ma\'ruf pair was represented by the director of the Megawati Institute, Arif Budimanta, while the Prabowo-Sandiaga pair by the director of the Prabowo-Sandiaga’s national campaign team, Sudirman Said.
Besides Yose, the speakers also included the chief economist of Bank Mandiri, Anton Gunawan and executive director of the Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo), Danang Girindrawardana.
In his presentation, Arif Budimanta said, in 2019-2024, if Jokowi and Ma\'ruf were elected, the pair would prioritize the development of human resources and economic decentralization based on the advantages of each region. The central government will work with regional governments to build a productive, independent, fair and competitive economic structure.
"This regional growth strategy will be implemented so that the imbalance between the eastern and western parts of Indonesia will not occur again in the future," said Arif.
According to Sudirman, Indonesia\'s economic development is still heavily dependent on external factors. For an example, Indonesia still continues to import a number of agricultural commodities.
He also said that the key to the success of economic development was in the hands of technocrats. According to him, scholars must be directly involved in the management of the country\'s economy.
Global economy
According to Yose, the paradigm of both pairs of presidential and vice presidential candidates still gives little attention to the impact of Indonesia\'s economy on the global economic situation. This can be seen from the vision and mission of each pair.
In Jokow-Ma\'ruf\'s vision and mission, the word ”independence” is stated 15 times, but the word “international” is stated only once, while the world “global” is twice. Meanwhile in Prabowo-Sandiaga\'s vision and mission, the word “independence” is mentioned five times, the word “international” is only once, and there is no word “global”.
"In fact, Indonesia and the world are interdependent. We must begin to incorporate a number of global issues, and see outside," he said.
Whoever wins the 2019 presidential election, said Yose, it will not be easy for them to face the global turmoil, which is predicted to continue until 2020. "The toughest challenges will be in dealing with four interrelated problems -- the rupiah weakens, affecting the cost of imported goods, and prices of basic commodities have begun to rise at the beginning of the second half of 2018, and at the end, the purchasing power of the people would decline," he said.
According to Bank Indonesia data, Indonesia\'s foreign debt totaled US$360.7 billion or equivalent to Rp 5.47 quadrillion as of August 2018.
Anton Gunawan said, each pair needed to give clear answers to convince investors. The candidate pairs must also explain their concrete programs to protect the rupiah from further depreciation. One way is to provide incentives to encourage businesses to convert their export earnings into the rupiah.
Danang Girindrawardana also asked the presidential and vice presidential candidates to stop politicizing labor unions. (DIM / BOW)