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Jokowi’s power consolidation buries outspoken opposition
Outspoken government critics Fadli Zon and Fahri Hamzah are now conspicuously absent from national politics after President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo managed to consolidate power over the past few months, effectively reducing the opposition in the House of Representatives by over a third
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span>Outspoken government critics Fadli Zon and Fahri Hamzah are now conspicuously absent from national politics after President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo managed to consolidate power over the past few months, effectively reducing the opposition in the House of Representatives by over a third.
The two critics still make public appearances and are active on social media, but Fadli and Fahri’s roles have diminished. Cabinet Secretary Pramono Agung is among those who have expressed how they missed the men’s pointed criticism.
Despite their declining prominence, both Fadli and Fahri remain in politics. The former currently serves as a deputy to the Gerindra Party chairman, chairs the House’s Inter-Parliamentary Cooperation Committee (BKSAP) and is in House Commission I overseeing politics and defense. The latter has set up a new political party, called the People’s Wave Party (Gelora), along with former Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) chairman Anis Matta.
After Gerindra joined the government coalition following Probowo Subianto’s appointment as Defense Minister after losing the 2019 general elections, Fadli declared himself a jubir rakyat (people’s spokesman), although he is no longer as vocal as before.
In the new power structure, Fadli has had to let go of his post as House deputy speaker as Prabowo picked another Gerindra executive, Sufmi Dasco Ahmad, for the position. Dasco has also replaced Fadli as the party spokesperson, a position Fadli had held since the party’s establishment in 2008.
Fadli said it was reasonable for Prabowo to replace him as he was aware that he might not be the right person to cooperate with the government.
“I told Pak Prabowo that I had completed my job as House deputy speaker peacefully. Dasco was considered close to people in the government, while I was among those who opposed the idea of Gerindra joining the Jokowi coalition from the start. I want Gerindra to form a strong opposition,” Fadli recently told The Jakarta Post.
Having led the opposition camp for five years, Gerindra members were divided over whether the party should back Jokowi, who defeated Prabowo in the last two presidential elections, or remain in opposition. Dasco, a former State Intelligence Agency (BIN) officer, is believed, according to Fadli, to be one of the people who laid the groundwork for the Jokowi-Prabowo reconciliation, along with BIN chief Budi Gunawan.
Gerindra’s internal division has lingered, despite Fadli’s claim that the differences between members do not necessarily affect Gerindra’s unity under Prabowo’s leadership.
Once asked by Prabowo to be one of Jokowi’s ministers, Fadli said that he and Prabowo’s 2019 running mate Sandiaga Uno had been against the idea of the party joining the government and had therefore refused to accept the offer.
Fadli said Prabowo had never asked him to be silent. Therefore, he has remained critical of the government even though he cannot speak for the party anymore.
“The way I stand for the people is by giving honest opinions. If it is bad then it is,” he said, adding that he still criticized a number of government policies, such as the increase in Health Care and Social Security Agency (BPJS Kesehatan) premiums and the handling of the novel coronavirus outbreak.
Unlike Fadli, Fahri is no longer a lawmaker as he did not enter the 2019 legislative election. This was a result of a prolonged dispute with executives from PKS, his former political vehicle.
Fahri is considered more a Twitter wit than a harsh government critic. He acknowledged his precarious position as an ordinary citizen with none of the political immunity afforded to lawmakers.
“If I’m being serious, who will protect me? I no longer have the immunity to deal with the government because, as an ordinary person, I can be charged under the ITE [Electronic Information and Transactions] Law,” he told the Post recently.
Fahri believed that Jokowi himself might have no intention of burying criticism or undermining democratic principles, but he said politicians tended to misunderstand the presidential system, in which the people voted separately for their president and lawmakers with different mandates.
“All lawmakers should act as opposition because people elect them for that reason, but in our system, they are being directed by the party leaders to be silent. This is problematic because the people have not chosen lawmakers to give in to the government and political parties but rather to oversee the government.”
Fadli echoed Fahri’s opinion, suggesting that Indonesia’s democracy was in peril and that the situation could lead to “street politics”, which should not be drawn out.
“Actually, there is no more democracy in Indonesia, only pseudodemocracy,” Fadli said.
At the beginning of the Cabinet inauguration, Jokowi said his decision to include Gerindra in his Cabinet was for the sake of Indonesia’s gotong royong (mutual cooperation) democracy. He also suggested that the concept of opposition itself did not exist in the country.
Fadli and Fahri said that Jokowi did not have the crème de la crème in his Cabinet, which resulted in some of his aides being criticized for their controversial public statements regarding issues such as the coronavirus and the omnibus bill on job creation. The Cabinet has been active for just over 100 days.
Critics say the situation has worsened as House lawmakers have failed to perform checks and balances.
Three of the nation’s nine major political parties are outside of Jokowi’s administration: the PKS, the Democratic Party and the National Mandate Party (PAN). They have a combined 148 out of the 575 total seats in the House, but only the PKS has publicly declared itself an opposition party.
Another outspoken government critic, Rocky Gerung, said the Jokowi administration was currently experiencing “political decay” as it went unchallenged because everybody belonged to the same group.
“The regime is managing itself to fall. [...] They don’t know what is ripe and what is rotten,” Rocky said on his Youtube channel.
Hurriyah, the director of the University of Indonesia’s (UI) Center for Political Studies, said that a situation where the executive was too dominant and hegemonic and lacked checks and balances — a similar condition to the New Order era — could endanger democracy in Indonesia as the lack of accountability could become a “new normal for Indonesia’s political landscape, especially because Indonesia is still among the countries with a flawed democracy”.
Civil society groups, meanwhile, are still fragmented after the 2019 elections with the absence of “common enemies” among them.
“The potential of our democracy is backsliding. The authoritarian tendency is getting stronger. There is a big gap between the discourse during the campaign and what has been realized,” Hurriyah said, adding that such situations could create public distrust and disrupt the country’s political stability.
