Prof. Vedi Hadiz (findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au)

Indonesia’s political landscape has changed rapidly after the reelection of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. Politics of accommodation marked several meetings between Jokowi and both his allies and adversaries amid questions about who gets what in Jokowi’s next Cabinet. To understand these maneuvers, The Jakarta Post’s Nezar Patria talked with Prof. Vedi Hadiz, the director of Asian Studies at the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, Australia, on the sidelines of a seminar in Yogyakarta last week.

Question: After the bitterly contested presidential election, eventually the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) reconciled with the Gerindra Party. What do you think of that phenomenon?

Answer: Well, it shows that the conflict during the election was not in any way ideological whatsoever. In fact, Indonesian politics, in spite of all the talks about Islam versus nationalism, is not ideological. Indonesian politics is about conflict over access to power and resources. The political parties are not defined by their programs, ideologies or vision for society. They mainly are just an amalgamation of people who happen to join up together because they think that this vehicle would be successful in terms of getting into the labors of power. Right?

So, the fact that Gerindra and the PDI-P could get together is not surprising, because there is no difference between them. They are bound by the fact that both of them want to use the state apparatus to pursue particularistic interests. And for all the supposed connection between Gerindra and the Islamic groups, it shows that their alliance is completely opportunistic.

The ruling PDI-P party has proposed a constitutional amendment to reinstate GBHN, the long-defunct policy framework for long-term development plans, which means reempowering the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR). Some say this could lead to the revival of New Order-style presidential election by the MPR. What is your view?

I think the constitutional amendment is pretty much an empty slogan. All nationalism has specific characteristics. [I would say] that Indonesia has its own characteristics, so does Brazilian nationalism or Greek nationalism or Ugandan nationalism. They all have their specific characteristics. I think this is actually about attempts to shift some of the power and authority over decisionmaking and policymaking from the President to the supra-legislative body and therefore, to the party run by the matriarch Megawati Soekarnoputri. So, I think this is a way of actually undermining the authority of the President by his own party.

Given the rise of political Islam, what is the future of nationalism in Indonesia?

All parties, if they want to survive in Indonesia, have to claim that they adhere to the idea of the Indonesian nation state. So, with different kinds of varieties, all of them are nationalist, although in different ways. Now, the thing is that nationalism is something that is permeable. It has the capacity to absorb things from different cultural references and political traditions.

So, it is possible, for example, for nationalism to have a leftist character. In the Indonesian case, nationalism, I think, has absorbed elements of the Islamic discourse as a way of making sure that Islamic political forces do not dominate power but are coopted into the existing power structures.

Since the 212 Movement, the Indonesian political landscape is changing, and the government should accommodate these political forces. Do you think the PDI-P ‘s nationalism can cope with this?

Actually, there is no real reason to accommodate these 212 Movement people. They supported Anies Baswedan, who won the Jakarta election. Then there was a celebration, but nobody from the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) or the Islamist groups was there.

They were used and then they were chucked away. In this election, they lost, right? And the first thing Gerindra’s Prabowo Subianto did is to try to negotiate himself into the existing power structures on top of the protestation of the groups that supported him. It shows that these groups don’t really matter on their own.

They matter only when they are able to develop alliances with competing factions of the oligarchy. On their own, they mean only a limited amount. Their strength is their capacity to mobilize people, right, to [take] to the streets.

But the thing is, you always have to have tension to do that, and you always have to produce and fabricate conditions where there is a lot of tension in order to mobilize continuously. But if there were a real discipline, structured, well-developed organization, their ability to nurture and cultivate their constituency would be on the basis of organizational discipline, which they don’t have.

You say there are only two ideological choices for the elite and the masses, without leftism. There are nationalism and Islamism. How do you see Indonesian politics in 2024?

I think Indonesian democracy is becoming impoverished in terms of its ideational foundations and it is becoming increasingly authoritarian in some of its characteristics. So, I believe the combination of the influences of status nationalism and that of Islamic populism will contribute to the further impoverishment of the ideational basis of Indonesian democracy and contribute to its further tendency to practice authoritarian measures.

How might the Jokowi administration perform in his second term?

It seems he is very developmentalist and aims to cultivate mid-scale business. That’s his social background. So, it kind of makes sense from that point of view. What you find completely lacking in his speech was any vision of a just Indonesia, any vision of Indonesia where people’s social rights are to be guaranteed. It’s a very technocratic developmentalist sort of vision that shows the degree to which he has actually been sucked up by the logic of oligarchic politics himself.

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