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Foreign policy was a nonissue in past elections. This could change in 2024
Early signs indicate that Indonesia's foreign policy stance will carry unprecedented weight among those vying for the presidency in 2024.
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President Joko Widodo (left) and Russian President Vladimir Putin walk together on June 30, 2022 as they head to a joint press conference at the Kremlin in Moscow.
(Presidential Secretariat Press Bureau/Laily Rachev)
As with anywhere else in the world, foreign policy rarely matters in Indonesian elections. Candidates mostly steer clear of taking a clear-cut position on world politics, while voters mostly care about bread-and-butter issues.
It doesn’t help that political parties and presidential candidates lack any ideological underpinnings that would guide them in what position to take on some major policy issues, from subsidies to human rights and how to position Indonesia in today’s geopolitical landscape.
In the four presidential elections we have had since 2004, the candidates mostly opted for technocratic solutions to the country’s problems. Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s victories at the polls campaigning on infrastructure development, first in 2014 and then for reelection in 2019, should be seen as the triumph of technocracy over a more wholesome vision of the world.
It also doesn’t help that the country’s “free and active” foreign policy doctrine is a malleable concept on which a candidate could project anything they wanted in the name of diplomacy.
The foreign policy espoused by Indonesia’s first democratically elected president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who projected the image of a competent administrator, was “A Million Friends and Zero Enemies”: basically, the free and active policy doctrine on steroids.
Under Yudhoyono, the country actively engaged in many international forums and events, particularly to showcase its democratic progress. At times, president Yudhoyono made a point of attending international events and even chairing some key sessions, the most memorable being his cochairing of the UN High-Level Panel in 2013 alongside British prime minister David Cameron and Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
Yet beyond the pageantry, there was very little substance to that session, with Indonesia continuing to avoid making big commitments that could compromise its principles of neutrality and noninterference.
