Mega eyes our voting system

Everything currently wrong in the resource-rich archipelago is the fault of sinister others plundering the nation’s wealth, corrupting the young with evil ideas, and interfering in sovereign legal processes; purge the outsiders and all will be right.  That’s what her Dad did in the 1950s and so excavated an even bigger pit of economic mismanagement.

Mega doesn’t want the Indonesian system where the president is chosen by the people whatever party he or she represents; that’s populism.

What would suit her is the Australian process.  Under our law voters tick candidates from parties that have already proclaimed their leaders. Electors might not like the individual but you approve their party’s policies.

If our northern neighbour had used that arrangement Mega might now be President of Indonesia for the second time because her party topped the polls.

Instead the man sitting on the edge of the Palace sofas once comfortably occupied by Mega as a child, is the easy going not over-bright Jokowi, briefly Governor of Jakarta and before that a likeable small town mayor.  Now he’s floundering, way out of his depth in the fetid crocodile swamp that passes for Jakarta politics

Jokowi is not part of the feudal Javanese military, business and semi-regal dynasties that have run the world’s fourth largest nation since Soekarno proclaimed independence from the colonial Dutch in 1945. That was part of his appeal. 

Despite getting little campaign help from Megawati, but a lot from the hopeful young, he won by eight million votes over Prabowo in what was widely interpreted as the triumph of the little man.

Sadly Jokowi, 53, has proved to be exactly that. If there’s a statesman’s gene in Jokowi it has yet to become dominant. No one is saying he has greasy palms, but when given the people’s mandate he fumbled the pass, dropped it and then lost direction.

Elected on promises of no more transactional appointments, a cabinet of altruistic reformers and a massive crack down on corruption, he’s failed on every pledge.

He also told Cabinet ministers to abandon senior party roles to concentrate on their jobs. Mega’s daughter Puan, Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Culture, has ignored her leader.

Mum made Puan the party head of political and social affairs, and handpicked 25 others for top tasks saying she’d tested them all – but only she knew the test.

The PDI-P has another record:  It’s the party with the most members jailed by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). One serving politician was even arrested in his hotel at the congress for alleged bribery.  In a news story The Jakarta Post reported ‘the party’s central board is full of graft-tainted figures and politicians with dubious reputations.’