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Former Jokowi campaign strategist to counsel Ganjar
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Andi Widjajanto emerges from an official car at the Presidential Palace in Central Jakarta in 2017. (tribunnews.com/Dani Permana)
Andi Widjajanto, a strategist who advised on President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s presidential campaign, has joined the camp of presumptive presidential candidate and Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) member Ganjar Pranowo.
Speaking about his new role supporting the former Central Java governor, Andi said he would lead a division in Ganjar’s campaign team dubbed “Politics 5.0”, which would provide strategy research and analysis, making use of artificial intelligence, big data and machine learning.
The division would “project the right strategic issues to be raised by candidates, campaign teams and constituents, at specific times,” he told reporters at the High End building in Central Jakarta, where Ganjar’s campaign team convened for weekly meetings.
The 50-year-old strategist, who currently serves as governor of the National Resilience Institute (Lemhannas), helped prepare and conduct Jokowi’s 2014 and 2019 presidential campaigns, both against retired general Prabowo Subianto.
Andi is the son of the late Maj. Gen. (ret) Theo Syafei, who joined the PDI-P in the years before Soeharto’s authoritarian New Order regime collapsed in 1998 and became an advisor to PDI-P chairwoman Megawati.
After Jokowi’s victory in 2014, Andi was tapped to join Jokowi’s transition team, which helped the president-elect devise a governing strategy as the new administration took the baton from outgoing president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Andi served as Jokowi’s cabinet secretary from 2014 before eventually being replaced by former PDI-P secretary-general Pramono Anung following calls from within the PDI-P for Andi’s dismissal over accusations he was blocking the party’s access to the President.
The incident was one of the first indications that Jokowi was seeking to keep his party at arm’s length. The President’s relationship with Megawati became slowly more tenuous over the course of the following decade.
Andi returned to the national political scene when Jokowi asked him to assist the Jokowi-Ma’ruf Amin campaign team for the 2019 election. He was credited with spearheading the formation of Cakra 19, a group of retired high-ranking military officers who supported Jokowi.
In 2020, he was made a senior advisor to the presidential chief of staff to provide counsel on military, intelligence and defense strategy.
Andi’s appointment as Lemhannas governor in 2022 signaled that he had won Megawati’s favor. He said he had received her blessing to lead the institution and that she had asked him to carry Sukarno’s Marhaen ideas into Lemhannas.
Marhaenism is an ideology developed by founding president Sukarno and carried on by the PDI-P that adapts Marxist ideas to the local context.
When asked about his own stance in the midst of political tensions, Andi said, “Politically, I am ‘red’ and will always follow the PDI-P’s direction in making political decisions, especially when it comes to elections. So it isn’t a difficult decision for me.”
