President Joko Widodo and Vice President Jusuf Kalla walk out of the Vice President\'s Office on Tuesday (06/02/2018). The President visited Kalla in the Vice President\'s Office for lunch. After lunch, the two leaders discussed a number of topics, such as efforts to increase investment.
October 20, 2018 marked four years into the administration of Joko Widodo and Jusuf Kalla. There have been plenty of achievements but, in a handful of aspects, the administration has fallen short of expectations.
Claims of success and accusations of failure from the opposition are commonplace in today’s democracy. Success in development is backed with various technocratic data, such as the number of kilometers of toll roads completed, the number of airports constructed, the number of seaports repaired and the declining poverty rate.
Such claims of success will, understandably, be counterattacked by the opposition with another set of data, including the rupiah’s weakening at the hands of the US dollar, rising debt and increasing prices of goods.
The opposition can use such issues to undermine the incumbent’s electability and to generate political gains for themselves. Economic issues, such as the strengthening of the dollar against almost all other currencies in the world, which has negatively affected the rupiah, should have been anticipated by the Joko Widodo and Jusuf Kalla administration.
The two sides are engaging in a war of narratives. Apart from economic issues, to which President Jokowi should give his full attention, he should also respond to and provide explanations to the criticism that he has yet to fulfill his campaign promises. This includes the National Commission on Human Rights’ (Komnas HAM) criticism that many human rights violations remain unresolved. Resolving human rights violations was included in Jokowi’s Nawacita campaign promise in 2014 and the President should explain its lack of fulfillment to voters.
We hope that, apart from the upcoming celebration of democracy on April 17, 2019, President Jokowi can use his final year in office to fulfill all of his campaign promises. He should remain oriented toward working for the interests of the people and the nation. The Working Cabinet’s performance must be optimized to chase unfulfilled targets.
Coordination between ministers must be improved to prevent chaos, as we saw in the cases of rice imports and fuel price hikes. Ministers and the government at large should really adopt a singular stance in policies and mitigate potential communication risks before making any public statements.
Here lies the important role of a government spokesperson (which has yet to exist; currently, we only have a presidential spokesperson) to spread information about the government’s achievements, policies and responses in a proper context to the public.
Using power for the sake of people’s interests is inevitable. Let the people decide who will lead us to the future as the essence of general elections is either to “continue” or to “replace”. If the people are satisfied with the incumbent’s performance, the election can extend his or her mandate for five more years. On the contrary, if the people are not satisfied, the mandate may be given to one of the incumbent’s challengers. This is democracy! There are still six months to convince the people!
