Indonesia in 2016: Jokowi Consolidates Power

After a difficult first year in office, President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) showed in 2016 that he has grown increasingly adept at manoeuvring through the maze of political and economic interests in Jakarta. For most of the year he continuously consolidated his power through a range of political manoeuvres that included the broadening of his governing coalition, a cabinet reshuffle, and the appointment of his preferred choice for police chief. Towards the end of the year, however, a new challenge emerged for Jokowi when his political opponents joined forces with Islamist hardliners to mobilize hundreds of thousands of protestors to demonstrate against Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok), an ally of Jokowi, who faced politically motivated blasphemy charges. In terms of policy, the President and his reshuffled team focused much of their attention on economic matters, in particular the development of Indonesia's ailing infrastructure and the implementation of a tax amnesty law. Internationally, the need to attract more foreign investment and the rising tensions in the South China Sea prompted Jokowi to pay more attention to foreign policy than in his inaugural year.

All in all, the President tightened his grip on power in 2016, but challenges remain, not least because there is still a lack of coherence and clear direction in Jokowi's policymaking and personnel decisions. This chapter will highlight these seemingly contradictory features of Jokowi's second year in office through an analysis of some of the most significant events in Indonesian politics in 2016. First, it will provide an overview of domestic politics, which were dominated by Jokowi's quest to strengthen his governing coalition on the one hand and an ongoing slide towards religious and political conservatism on the other. Second, it will outline key trends in the Indonesian economy, emphasizing that Indonesia's GDP growth remained relatively flat compared to 2015 despite a number of ambitious economic reform initiatives aimed at stimulating investment and improving fiscal space. Third, the discussion will shift to foreign policy, where Indonesia attempted to be more assertive in its pursuit of tangible benefits yet remained constrained by its lack of military capabilities and effective diplomatic resources.

Domestic Political Developments

By the time President Jokowi completed his second year in office in October, many observers regarded 2016 as the year when Jokowi matured as a President and started to impose his will on key stakeholders in parties and parliament. Not only did he cement his grip on power by expanding his governing coalition, but he also increasingly emancipated himself from Megawati Sukarnoputri, the powerful leader of the Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (PDIP), which had nominated him for president back in 2014. At the same time though, political developments this year also showed that Jokowi still lacks a compelling political narrative for Indonesia that would go beyond his vaguely formulated developmentalist ideas.¹ Even more troubling for many of his original supporters was Jokowi's ongoing indifference towards corruption and human rights. At the end of the year this indifference towards a reformist agenda came back to haunt him when his political opponents used a huge Islamist protest rally against incumbent Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok), who was accused of blasphemy, as a pretext for trying to undermine the president's authority. As the fallout from the blasphemy case against Ahok continued into the New Year, Jokowi's tightened grip on power faced its first serious challenge, with consequences that will only become clearer in the coming months.

Consolidating Power

The first indication of Jokowi's increasingly assertive presidential posture was the expansion of his governing coalition and the concomitant weakening of parliamentary opposition. By mid-2016 no less than three political parties (Golkar, PPP, and PAN) had abandoned the opposition coalition led by Prabowo Subianto's Gerindra Party and pledged allegiance to Jokowi's government. As a result, the President's support in parliament surged from a meagre 37 per cent at the beginning of his term to a two-thirds majority of 69 per cent. Such broad support is of course reminiscent of the rainbow coalitions Jokowi's predecessors had assembled, yet there...