The World’s Third-Largest Democracy Votes, Ctd

The new president of Indonesia is a metalhead! Congrats to @jokowi_do2! READ MORE HERE: shar.es/L1OJd http://t.co/taTCjKEHTG—
Revolver Magazine (@Revolvermag) July 23, 2014

The final results of Indonesia’s presidential election came in yesterday, and Jakarta Governor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo won with 53 percent of the vote. All is not yet settled, however, as his opponent Prabowo Subianto intends to challenge the election in court:

A case would test the institutions of Indonesia’s young democracy, especially the Constitutional Court. Set up after the fall of Suharto, its reputation suffered a severe blow earlier this year when Akil Mochtar, its former chief justice, was imprisoned for life after being convicted of graft—for rigging rulings in disputed local elections. His successor, Hamdan Zoelva, used to belong to one of the six parties that backed Mr Prabowo. Their association makes many Jokowi supporters uneasy.

Still, it is hard to see how a challenge could succeed. The court would have to find evidence that more than 4m votes had been tampered with to overturn Jokowi’s victory. Some irregularities in the counting process have come to light, but Mr Prabowo has produced no evidence of fraud on the scale he alleges. And while the court may have the final say on the election, the political mood already seems to be turning Jokowi’s way.

Assuming Prabowo’s challenge fails, Jokowi will become the first Indonesian president not plucked from the country’s political or military elite. Yenni Kwok calls his election the start of a new chapter in Indonesian history:

Unlike many established figures who dominate the political arena, the 53-year-old Jokowi came from a humble provincial background: he grew up in a riverside slum in Solo, Central Java, and does not have ties to an influential family. After a career as a furniture entrepreneur, he started in politics as mayor of his hometown less than a decade ago — and this rapid rise, along with the level of electoral enthusiasm and volunteerism his candidacy generated, has invited comparisons to U.S. President Barack Obama (the two were even born in the same year). Many see Jokowi’s win as an augury for a more mature era in Indonesian politics.

“His candidacy would have been improbable just a few years ago,” says Aaron Connelly, East Asia research fellow at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, who focuses on Indonesian politics. “This has not historically been a country in which parents told their children that they could grow up to become President.”

Ariel Heryanto attributes Jokowi’s success to the unpaid, unorganized grassroots movement that supported him:

Jokowi’s success is hugely a result of the spontaneous popular support from largely non-organised groups of ordinary Indonesians. They converged in various forms, with a high degree of fluidity. Famous artists and public intellectuals form parts of it, but the majority are everyday commoners. … As a candidate, Jokowi had limited resources and interest to mobilise the masses to support him. From early on his supporters impatiently pressed him to run for president. In contrast to the flow of the familiar “money politics”, individual citizens proudly published bank slips on social media, showing off their tiny share of donations to Jokowi’s election campaign. Jakarta’s pro-Jokowi July 5 concert attracted over 100,000 people. Unpaid volunteers with no political party affiliation designed and ran the event.

But the new president won’t have much time to bask in the glory of his victory, however historic it may be. James Lindsay rolls out the long list of problems he has to contend with:

Economic growth is slowing, inflation and interest rates are rising, the currency is weakening, and investment is falling. Economists expect things to get worse before they get better, largely because Indonesia’s commodity exports are fetching lower prices in world markets. The Indonesian government is running a substantial budget deficit, in good part because of overly generous fuel subsidies that amount to nearly $12 per day per driver in the country. The resulting surge in domestic demand for gasoline is one of the reasons why the former member of OPEC has become a net importer of oil. The cost of fuel subsidies is also keeping Indonesia from making desperately needed investments in infrastructure. Jokowi probably won’t be able to make much progress on any of these problems if he doesn’t do something about the country’s long history of government corruption. And you thought you had a lot of things on your to-do list?