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View all search resultsTalk of extension keeps Jokowi from becoming lame-duck president
Wth so much political capital in his hands, Jokowi has been able to push almost all his policies, including his legislative agenda, with little obstruction.
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I
rrespective of what happens in 2024, the current talk about extending President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s term beyond the constitutional limit has had one major impact: Whether by design or not is anybody’s guess, but Jokowi has not become the lame duck that a final-term president is normally expected to be.
More than half-way through the second and last term of his presidency, Jokowi has defied all pundits’ predictions about him becoming a dysfunctional president, as we saw happen to his predecessor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in (2004-2014). Another good comparison would be with United States presidents, and the case of Barrack Obama (2009-2017) is very telling of how he struggled with his legislative agenda in the second term.
None of that is happening to Jokowi and in fact, today he is still very much in charge of the nation, if not more so than when he took his second oath of office in October 2019.
For one, he is still in command of the seven-party coalition government, even though unlike all presidents before him, he does not chair any of them and has had to negotiate every step of the way to ensure their support. He is still very much the country’s commander-in-chief, with both the Indonesian Military (TNI) and the National Police giving their unswerving and loyal support.
As if this was not enough, independent polls show the President is still very popular, an enviable position for any second-term president in a democracy. In spite of the COVID-19 pandemic, including some early policy blunders, and a severe economic recession, his approval ratings have never fallen below 60 percent, according to most surveys.
What this means is that, with so much political capital in his hands, Jokowi has been able to push almost all his policies, including his legislative agenda, with little obstruction.
In 2020, he got the House of Representatives to endorse the controversial omnibus Job Creation Law in spite of widespread opposition from labor and civil society groups. In February, he got the House to endorse the bill on the National Capital City allowing him to forge ahead with his plan to build a new city in East Kalimantan to become the Indonesia’s new capital city.
