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Indonesia is too important for ASEAN alone
Jokowi sent a clear message to ASEAN about the country’s global ambitions through his frank statement on Myanmar.
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ASEAN Secretary-General Lim Jock Hoi (left) greets Indonesian President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo during the ASEAN leaders' summit at the bloc's secretariat building in Jakarta on April 24, 2021. (Handout/Muchlis Jr/Indonesian Presidential Palace via REUTERS)
Hosting the Group of 20 summit, scheduled for October in Bali, will be the most celebrated global moment for Indonesia since its declaration of independence in 1945.
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who is known as an inward-looking leader, will chair the prestigious summit. He has told his Cabinet and top government officials that he will take all possible measures to ensure all the leaders of the world’s largest 20 economies attend the meeting in person. That’s a tall order, as Indonesia has to tame the COVID-19 pandemic to convince the G20 leaders to come to Bali.
Indonesia has hosted several international forums, such as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit, consisting of developing and underdeveloped nations, in September 1992 and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in November 1994.
The President has prepared himself for the global forum and has lately become more assertive in voicing Indonesia’s stance on various international issues, as evinced by his expression of strong reservations over the Quad, a military alliance involving the United States, Japan, Australia and India that is meant to contain China. The President also openly showed his aversion to the AUKUS military alliance of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
In response to China’s maneuvering in the Natuna Sea, Jokowi has taken firm actions to appease his domestic audience while carefully dealing with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Jokowi has also shown who’s boss in ASEAN by openly telling Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen not to misuse his rotary chairmanship of the 10-member regional group to derail efforts to make the Myanmar military junta comply with the five-point consensus agreed upon in Jakarta last April. It was the President’s most blunt statement ever to his ASEAN colleagues, even more striking considering his previously low appetite for foreign affairs.
Assuming the presidency of the elite club of the world’s biggest economies has clearly given President Jokowi more confidence in reasserting the country’s de facto leadership of ASEAN, a role that he had ignored since coming to power in 2014. His clear and consistent stance against the military coup in Myanmar will be a key factor for his credibility in directing the course of the G20 this year and in pushing ASEAN to be more adaptive to universal values of democracy and human rights.
