Undermining democracy in Indonesia

The New York Timesreported the move as a 'setback for the country's democratic transition and a naked power grab by its wounded political elite'.

Before this latest turn of events it was believed the era of the commoner was about to dawn and the reign of the high-born, the top ranks in the military and the well-connected corrupt had been guillotined.

Jokowi's success seemed to show that anyone in Indonesia could reach the top without sacrificing the nation's fine values of altruism, community self-help, respect for others and maintaining harmony, and that ambition is not shameful.

The eldest of four children and the only boy, the President elect was born in 1961 and raised in a poor family that gathered timber. He laboured to get through school and enter the prestigious Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta where he graduated with a science degree in forestry.

After working for a government agency in Aceh he returned to Central Java and started his own furniture business. Later he became mayor of Surakarta (also known as Solo). In 2012 he was elected Governor of Jakarta where he became popular for his blusukan (walkabout) administration, meeting ordinary folk and listening to their concerns.

This down-to-earth style, so different from his arrogant and protocol-driven predecessors, made him a media darling and propelled him to stand as a presidential candidate.

However this background, appealing as it seems, has given little protection against a determined cabal of well-funded elite politicians better known, as one Jakarta newspaper reported, for their 'fractiousness, proclivity for colossal corruption, political dysfunction and unfettered absenteeism than actually getting anything done'.

If external hostility wasn't enough, Jokowi also faces domestic difficulties. Megawati Sukarnoputri, the petulant daughter of first president Sukarno who was overthrown by Soeharto in 1965, heads thePartai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan(PDIP – the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle).

Her comments and behaviour since the election have done nothing to erase a widely held view that Jokowi is her puppet. She has refused to meet the outgoing President to discuss tactics to head off Prabowo's democracy destabilisation, reportedly because she bears grudges that date back to 2004 when defeated for the presidency by SBY.

With a dysfunctional party, a hostile parliament, a vengeful establishment that controls several media outlets, and huge economic problems across an archipelago of 240 million people, Jokowi is going to need extraordinary political skills just to survive, let alone introduce the reforms he promised during the campaign.

In this environment the new president's Jakarta walkabouts will be of little value when he confronts the oligarchs that have always run Indonesia. They never use the footpaths.