Jokowi, Indonesia’s ‘Middle Class President‘, is the classic example of his illiberal-democratic class.
Does the reshuffle show that Jokowi, Indonesia’s first middle class president since the fall of Suharto, is consolidating power or that he is merely a puppet for established political elites?
In the rumble between the pluralists and the oligarchy theorists, what’s missing is an appreciation of Jokowi’s own illiberal tendencies, his impatience with legal complexity and the haphazard ideological mash-up that guides his economic thinking.
These are not qualities of the man per se, but symptomatic of the Indonesianmiddle class and its unique political conditions under which it was formed.
While reform has been one of the key slogans of the Jokowi administration, thatreform has focused mainly on the economy and not at all on amplifying thequality of Indonesian democracy.
Jokowi is a member of the bourgeoisie, the small entrepreneurial faction ofIndonesia’s middle class.
If the cabinet reshuffle tells us anything, it’s that our Middle Class President ismore comfortable in his uncomfortable political accommodations than we havepreviously imagined.
source: http://www.newmandala.org/comfortable-uncomfortable-accommodations/
Tontowi@ Learning Life, Writing Life 