Welcome Governor Jokowi

Welcome Governor Jokowi Yoes C. Kenawas ;  A Graduate Student and Research Analyst at the Indonesia Program of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Singapore

JAKARTA POST, 21 September 2012

It is almost certain that Jakarta will have a new governor. Although the Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPU Jakarta) will not announce the official count until Oct. 3, based on a quick count by the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI), as of Thursday afternoon, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo- Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama was leading with 53.81 percent of the vote, while the incumbent, Fauzi “Foke” Bowo-Nachrowi “Nara” Ramli had 46.19 percent of the vote.

Usually, the quick count result is a good projection of the final count. Therefore, we can expect that Jokowi (the mayor of Surakarta) and Ahok (former regent of East Belitung) will be the next governor and deputy governor of Jakarta.

Jokowi’s success has been associated with a new hope for an overcrowded Jakarta. Jakartans expect him to replicate his achievements in Surakarta, where he succeeded in improving the quality of life and introduced a more humanized approach to solving the city’s problems.

However, Jakarta is not Surakarta. Apart from its special status as the capital of Indonesia, Jakarta is also home to 9.6 million people and 2.5 million more from the outskirts, all with varying ethnicities, who seek their fortune in the city. Jokowi will face a completely different challenge in his new post as the governor of Jakarta, which will require his skills as an administrator, politician, bureaucrat and inspiring figure for Jakartans.

Apart from the usual issues of traffic congestion, flooding and poor city planning, Jokowi should also pay attention to “invisible” challenges including: gaining support from political parties at the Jakarta City Council, reforming the culture of bureaucracy and improving external communications. Failure to do so would diminish his momentum, as many voters expect him to bring a positive wave of change to the city.

The first he must do is consolidate political support, particularly from political parties in the Council. The two parties that supported Jokowi, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and the Great Indonesian Movement Party (Gerindra) only have 17 seats out of 94 in the Council. It will put the new governor in a difficult position if the other political parties go against his initiatives in the future. Jokowi also needs to avoid the assumption that he could politically bargain with those parties.

The key is to avoid any horse-trading politics with those parties by being transparent, accountable, participative and abiding by the law.

Second, he needs to improve performance and change the culture of his bureaucracy. The next five years will be a sprint race against the public’s patience to see if he can make the changes he promised.

Therefore, he must ensure the public that he has a solid bureaucracy that is willing to support him with better, faster and agile bureaucratic services.

Reforming the bureaucracy is not an easy task. Efforts to bring changes will encounter resistance. Bureaucracy has its own structure, logic, values and cultures. Compared to Surakarta’s bureaucrats, Jakarta’s bureaucrats come from a more diverse background and were trained in a completely different environment from Surakarta. Changes might affect their personal interests and habits, which have been deeply entrenched for so many years in their career as public officials.

The key is to be a good and inspiring communicator as well as implementing reward and punishment mechanisms, which could encourage them to perform better and avoid misconduct.

The third challenge for Jokowi is managing and maintaining his administration’s connectivity with the public. It is important to take into account that developing plans for the public should follow the principles of planning, which are: by, for and with the people. Jokowi needs to find the right balance between embracing the people in the decision-making process and creating policies that best serve the public’s interests.

In this sense, Jokowi should maintain continuous communication with the public. However, considering his track record in Surakarta, this task should be an easy one for him. He is a rare example where a regional leader is able to build good communications with all stakeholders.

Jokowi should also remember that Jakartans are not easy to please. Based on the LSI-Tempo magazine survey, 17 percent of Jokowi-Ahok’s voters voted for the pair because they believe that Jokowi can fulfill his campaign promises, while the other 28.8 percent chose him because the public thinks that he cares for the people.

Jakarta is home to millions of middle-class people who always demand better living conditions. Jakartans can be unforgiving when they think their leader has failed them. The last victim was (soon-to-be) former governor Fauzi Bowo.

Jokowi’s ability to manage those challenges will be crucial for the next five years of his administration. Failure to do so could be fatal for his administration, particularly if he wants to run for a second term or if he aspires to run for a higher position, as suggested by many experts.

Jokowi stated that he would delegate some of the tasks to his deputy. The allocation of responsibility would be beneficial for Jokowi to overcome multifaceted issues in Jakarta and maintain harmony between him and his deputy.

Jokowi’s success or failure will be important as a national barometer that could inspire or discourage other provincial and district leaders in Indonesia to perform better.

Finally, welcome to Jakarta new governor!  ●