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Intervention is feature not bug in Jokowi economic policies
As a politician Jokowi was a dyed-in-the wool nationalist nominated in the election by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).
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President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo presents his national statement as part of the World Leaders' Summit of the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland on Nov. 1, 2021. (AFP/Andy Buchanan/Pool)
It is certainly presumptuous to deduce a pattern from just two events.
Yet, the similarity between the two was so striking that it is hard not to suspect that a greater force could be at play.
On the surface, the decisions by the administration of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to ban coal exports and to put a cap on the export of palm oil this month were certainly motivated by the desire to solve short-term problems; helping the state electricity company PLN deliver uninterrupted supplies of electricity and bringing down the price of cooking oil, a basic staple for a country addicted to fried food.
And for some, the back-to-back policies were howlers with many beginning to call Jokowi a socialist, especially for his government’s decision to put a cap on the price of cooking oil, which was a follow-up regulation to the palm oil export curbs.
But once we scrutinize the government’s record, the truth of the matter is that the last two policies were not an aberration and that these “protectionist” impulses are in fact a feature and not a bug in the Jokowi administration.
President Jokowi is a businessman, he could have reaped benefits from an open international trade system, yet as a politician he is a dyed-in-the wool nationalist nominated to run in the election by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which in the spectrum of the country’s political ideologies sits at the farthest left of the scale.
Occasionally, he may have taken the initiative to promote liberal policies, the passage of the Job Creation Law being the primary example of this.
