Partyforumseasia: After this year’s successful parliamentary and presidential elections Indonesia certainly deserves unrestricted praise for the consolidation of its young democracy. Organizing this campaigning and election marathon in densely populated Java and the 13.400 islands with 193.000.000 registered voters is a Herculean task.
In this administrative dimension glitches are unavoidable, but they were far from the systemic irregularities alleged by losing presidential candidate Prabowo.
So far the brighter side of Indonesia’s political development.
But there are also some all too visible shadows in the overall picture! One major dark area is being highlighted by prominent observer and commentator Julia Suryakusuma in her regular Wednesday column in the Jakarta Post http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/09/03/depok-potholes-and-a-new-breed-leaders.html
With the sobering example of inefficient local government in Depok, a suburb of Jakarta with the reputation of being the second most corrupt city in the country (“Fifty shades of Gray”), Suryakusuma describes why the outspoken public intellectual Rizal, a citizen in this area, decides to run for mayor. The “Jokowi effect” could mean that Indonesians take up their responsibility as citizens and shed the long years as subjects under a political class with obvious vested interests. Like all over Southeast Asia, the country has too many politicians who see politics as business and not according to Max Weber’s famous definition of “politics as a vocation”.
Rizal could set an example and a new generation of politicians with vocation following the election of Joko Widodo would certainly be good for Indonesia.