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COVID-19 becomes reality check for Jokowi promise
A new public opinion poll conducted by the Kompas daily, which was released on Tuesday, shows that President Jokowi's job disapproval rating stands at 52.5 percent.
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ne year into his second term, President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo's administration has now been sidetracked by COVID-19 and his efforts to realize his campaign promises are being thwarted by his lackluster handling of the pandemic, a setback which has raised doubts about his performance in office.
A new public opinion poll conducted by the Kompas daily, which was released on Tuesday, shows that President Jokowi's job disapproval rating stands at 52.5 percent.
In the public opinion survey, in which Kompas polled 529 respondents between Oct. 14 and 16, 46.3 percent of respondents were dissatisfied with Jokowi's performance in the job, while another 6.2 percent was very dissatisfied.
The latest job approval rating is a new low for President Jokowi, who began his second term on Oct. 20, 2019. In a public opinion survey released in late August, the Jakarta-based pollster Sjaiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC) found that Jokow's approval rating remained mostly unaffected by the COVID-19 crisis, with 67 percent of respondents saying that they were satisfied or very satisfied with Jokowi’s performance.
The job approval rating for the former Jakarta governor was 72 percent in March.
The Presidential Palace has acknowledged that COVID-19 is a game-changer and has forced President Jokowi to reorient his goals for his second term in office.
"This pandemic has affected some of [the President's] plans and programs [...] the government has to refocus and reallocate funding to prioritize programs and mitigation in health and socio-economic recovery," Presidential chief of staff Moeldoko said in a statement prefacing Jokowi's one-year progress report released on Tuesday.
In spite of the new challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, Moeldoko said that the President would continue working to realize the promises he made when campaigning for reelection in 2019.
Moeldoko said that Jokowi would continue to give priority to improving the people’s quality of life and building more infrastructure.
However, it is this focus on the economy and infrastructure that has invited criticism from political analysts.
Head of the political research center at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences Firman Noor said that a narrow focus on the economy had the effect of neglecting other aspects of governance, including violations of democratic principles and human rights – two topics glaringly absent from the President’s inauguration speech last year.
Firman told The Jakarta Post that Jokowi's apparent dismissal of democratic and human rights principles was visible in his government's choosing to forgo public consultation in the crafting of several key pieces of legislation, including the Job Creation Law.
And with his administration dismissing outright any effort to open public consultation during the passage of the bill, civil society groups have taken an increasingly critical stance toward his government’s policies, Firman said.
“There is this mismatch between this President’s so-called goodwill and a public that is skeptical that this goodwill is being taken for granted by the people around him with track records that aren’t all that clean,” he said. “It is this mismatch that has resulted in the current political turmoil.”
Furthermore, the widening gap in perception and distrust between the government and the public could potentially become the defining feature of Jokowi’s second term, unless prompt action is taken to correct the course, he said.
But if the current trend continues, all of the country’s hard-won democratic reforms after the fall of the New Order would be put at a further risk of being undermined.
Human rights group Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) also shared Firman's concern about the deterioration of Indonesia's democratic culture.
Kontras regards the series of arrests in April and May made by the National Police of government critics as one of the indications of the worsening standards of democracy in the country. “This is a dramatic setback in democracy as the government has legitimized [repression] through the use of regulations,” Kontras coordinator Rivanlee Anandar said on Monday.
Rivanlee also pointed to an order issued earlier this month by National Police chief Gen. Idham Azis to allow police officers to carry out “cyberpatrols” on social media and "media management" to discredit workers protesting against the jobs bill as another proof of the undermining of democracy in the country.
However, SMRC executive director Sirojudin Abbas was generous in his assessment of Jokowi's performance in his first year in office.
Sirojudin said that Jokowi's second term was more challenging than his first term as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and its attendant economic impact.
The pollster said that so far, Jokowi had been successful in navigating the choppy waters by pragmatically prioritizing the stability of the government and cushioning the economic impacts of the pandemic through social aid, as well as managing security and political stability.
“The government can be mobilized effectively and efficiently. The economic conditions are relatively well managed, with our [economy] not experiencing a setback as bad as those of other countries, while political and security conditions are relatively stable,” Sirojudin said.
