T

here are at least 66 sweet election campaign promises from President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo that the public are now monitoring. Corruption and human rights were among them.

The human rights promise in particular has been challenged by local NGO'€™s opposed to the death penalty. However, when you look at the detail of some of the speeches during the campaign, the specific items mentioned under human rights were the death of human rights defender Munir Said Thalib and investigations in past abuses by the government toward students and political activists.

The one issue that to me has not made progress and probably because this is the most entrenched is corruption. Jokowi'€™s progress on this front to date has been bad and this is the reason why Indonesians are are losing faith in him. But whoever had won the presidency would have also encountered similar difficulties. Former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was completely ineffective. Even in his second term when his own political party secured a large portion of the legislature, he was still unable to make any significant progress.

Locally, on the ground in Indonesia, people are starting to talk about why we don'€™t consider the death penalty for corruption (although this has not yet made its way into the mainstream public policy debate since most politicians would be running scared).

Why did Jokowi appoint an all female panel to propose the next anti-corruption commissioner? Not only does this reaffirm women'€™s position in Indonesian politics but it also will provide the best possible candidates as women are usually outside the political elite and hence should be free of loyalty pacts or returning past favors than most males.

The key failing was Jokowi'€™s desire to appear decisive to the Indonesian public, which has high expectations of the presidency after suffering from the indecisiveness of previous governments. I believe this caused him to not do a complete, thorough review of the clemency process.

In fact, one of the common views within Indonesia is that the political establishment is constantly looking for ways to erode Jokowi'€™s popularity since it doesn'€™t like the fact that he is an outsider, which they had to accept because of his popularity with the masses.

He is a reformist who puts the best interests of his people first, as opposed to the established political elite that only looks for the maximum benefit for their own interests. Sadly, external voices that have little understanding of the real politics of Indonesia are helping the old cronies through a constant focus on the negatives and no airtime or consideration is given to any positives.

Bill Trembledart
Jakarta