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or the past two years, the elite in Indonesia have underestimated Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo, time and time again. They doubted his experience in Surakarta (Solo) would apply to Jakarta, they doubted his experience in Jakarta would apply to the whole of Indonesia.

I think that Jokowi has a very good understanding of the problems the government faces.  The vision and mission statement looks nice, but seriously, most civil servants can'€™t even show up to work on time and have difficulty carrying out routine work like waterway and road maintenance.  

If the readers here were to go to each government office in Indonesia they would find that over the last 30-40 years, each office has produced 10-12 major master plans, mission documents costing billions of rupiah each.

Where are all the reports? Well in some dusty shelf usually guarded by some indifferent 50-year-old civil servant bored out of his mind.  

Jokowi is well aware of this problem, and as he explained during the Jakarta election campaign, there are six or seven master plans for Jakarta going back to the Dutch period, and none of them have been implemented.  

If Jokowi was to take the goals and plans from Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono'€™s first term and just carry them out more aggressively than Yudhoyono that would be a vast improvement for Indonesia.

However, investors can get a sense of what an Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) administration would look like under Jokowi by looking at what successful PDI-P politicians have done in the last decade.   

First off the PDI-P realizes that for Indonesia to grow, it must encourage business growth by creating conditions for the growth of small and medium sized businesses and attracting foreign investors in valued-added businesses and infrastructure.  

Of all the Indonesian politicians, Jokowi was the most aggressive in attracting Foxconn to Jakarta. '€œHe is serious, he doesn'€™t just talk. This is my experience,'€ Terry Gou (founder of Foxconn) said, describing a visit from Jokowi'€™s team to Taipei recently. '€œThey never stop.'€

Weilim
Jakarta