It’s a race between ‘known unknown’ cats Endy Bayuni  ;   Senior editor at The Jakarta Post

JAKARTA POST,  09 Maret 2014

                                                                                                                       

                                                                                         

                                                                                                             

Indonesians are going to the polling stations twice this year to cast their votes in what essentially amounts to another exercise that fits the local proverb (and somewhat overused cliché): “Buying a cat in a gunny sack.” A lot of the time, we don’t know what we are getting ourselves into. Going by past elections, the nation will end up picking more stinking and smelly specimens than purebred and pedigreed cats. In April, we will be voting for our representatives, and I can bet that the majority of the people are confused if not dumbfounded by the choice of so many politicians who they have barely heard of. Even with 90 percent of the incumbents trying their luck, the few we have heard about are usually known for the wrong reasons: corruption scandals, non-performance or just too much grandstanding on our TV screens. The choices in the presidential election, however, are more interesting for we are being confronted with choosing between the “known knowns” and “unknown knowns”. Confused? Don’t be. Those terms came about when then US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld tried at a press conference in 2002 to convince skeptical Americans that there was a link between Iraq and the terrorist organization responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and hence the pretext for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He said: “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” Going by opinion polls, we have two candidates that fit Rumsfeld’s description of “known knowns” because we know them too well: former president Megawati Soekarnoputri who chairs the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and Aburizal Bakrie, the head of the Bakrie Group business empire and chairman of Golkar. Interestingly, they are not as popular as the two frontrunners: Jakarta Governor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Prabowo Subianto, a retired Army general and founder of the Gerindra Party. Neither man has served at the national level, so they come with a lot of unknown qualities. And they fall in Rumsfeld’s category of “unknown knowns”: we know there are some things we do not know. (One could argue that outgoing president SBY, who cannot run again, is “you do you know”). In spite of their unknown qualities, or probably because of them, Jokowi and Prabowo are far more popular than the two “known-knowns”. Indonesian voters are taking their chances with candidates they don’t know much about over candidates they already know too well. Yes, back to the “buying a cat in a gunny sack” analogy. Jokowi’s popularity shot up the moment his name was thrown into the opinion surveys at the start of 2013 by different polling organizations that work independently of one another. He quickly took over from Prabowo, who until then had been voters’ top choice. Now Prabowo trails a distant second, according to polls, even though there is still no guarantee that Jokowi, a PDI-P member, will get the nomination ticket from Megawati. Jokowi’s phenomenal rise inevitably led people to start asking what Jokowi’s presidency would look like, and doubts are being thrown about on whether he has the capacity to lead a nation of 250 million people if his only track record in government has been confined to leading the Jakarta metropolitan city of 10 million for the past year-and-half, and seven years of an even smaller town in Central Java earlier. It’s a different ball game altogether, so his detractors would argue. How would Jokowi deal with national security? What about his foreign policy? What about the economy? Does he have a vision at all? There are so many questions that are left unanswered, and probably will remain so until his nomination is confirmed. But those same questions, and more, could also be asked of Prabowo. His background as a military person stopped in 1999 when he was forced to retire under controversial circumstances. He disappeared from public life but returned a few years later and in December 2007, he founded the Greater Indonesia Movement Party, or Gerindra. Prabowo plunged into the electoral scene in 2009, with the party barely squeezing into the House of Representatives and he managed to get nominated as VP candidate to Megawati of the PDI-P. They lost in their bid to Yudhoyono. Prabowo’s vision and mission are clearer than Jokowi’s through the campaigning that he and his Gerindra have waged in recent months. And this is probably one reason why some people are now aligning with his party, or say they will vote for the party, and presumably for him as president in July. One aspect that may go against Prabowo would be his track record in the military, and not surprisingly, his political rivals are already starting to ask questions about some of his military activities. Although voters know more about Prabowo than they do about Jokowi, it still doesn’t explain why the latter is the more popular, at least at present. If Megawati upsets us all and decides to keep the nomination ticket to herself, then we will see a race between two “known knowns” and one known unknown in the presidential race in July. But if she heeds voters’ calls, we may end up with a two-horse, or should we say two-cat, race, both of whom we know too little about. With all the risks the nation will be taking, let’s all wish that come July, may the best cat win. ●