Jakarta’s godfather and development sustainability Amalinda Savirani  ;   A lecturer in politics and government studies at Gajah Mada University, Yogyakarta; currently completing her PhD at the University of Amsterdam

JAKARTA POST, 13 September 2014

                                                                                                                       

                                                      

An interview with Deputy Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahja Purnama with The Jakarta Post last month, was titled “Ahok: I am the new Godfather”. The statement was made based on his response regarding regulating street vendors in the capital, who he would allow to operate on sidewalks and in parks as long as they followed the future rules. This notion would be in violation of existing regulations, in which vendors cannot legally operate on sidewalks. Ahok’s statement brings us to a discussion on the nature of leadership in a developing Jakarta. The interview gives us the impression that Ahok wants to us to believe he is a strong leader and that he will use his power and other means to issue and implement any policies he wishes, including those related to street vendors. His type of leadership seems to be the “one-man show”. He is not special in this. Survey results from research collaboration between Gadjah Mada University (UGM) and Oslo University under the project “Power, Welfare and Democracy”, published earlier this year, indicate the increasing trend of “figure-based politics” as a leadership style in Indonesia over the past years and seemingly into the years to come. Figure-based politics refers to the rise of individuals who assume public office at the local level (governors, mayors and regents) with the following characteristics: a) minimum links to political parties and grassroots movements, b) maximum links to a loose and ad-hoc supporter base, and c) minimum use of existing support from local administrators and the bureaucratic system to implement policies when they get elected. Figures such as Jakarta governor and President-elect Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, Ahok himself, Surabaya Mayor Tri Rismaharini and Bandung Mayor Ridwan Kamil emerged on the public stage with these three features. Figure-based politics emerges due to the stagnation of political institutions, mainly political parties, and the incompetency of administrators. Parties fail to play their function in grooming members to assume public positions. They are also dominated by a small elite circle, or oligarchies. This makes it difficult for parties to welcome new individuals and ideas. When these leaders reach public office, they have to deal with internal bureaucracies. Bureaucracy reform is often stagnated: there have been great difficulties in getting administrators and bureaucratic apparatuses to work efficiently and effectively to keep up with the speed of the new local leaders. Most of the leaders have new visions, which demand new strategies to implement them. Ahok is known as being very strict and direct regarding the incompetency of Jakarta’s administrators. His staff meetings, in which he scolds his staff, are freely available for viewing on YouTube. On the other hand, social movements, which can be an arena to groom leaders, have become severely fragmented. As a result, it has been difficult for social movements in general to promote any alternative people to fill public positions. Thus, the rise of figure-based politics is a logical consequence of weak democratic institution building, including political parties and grassroots movements, since reformasi and the difficulty of pushing any policies apart from routine ones in the government system. There is a good and bad side to figure-based or individual politics. This type of leadership can speed up policy making because the leaders are willing to cut through red tape. They can also push administrators to speed up their work and deliver shock therapy to those in dire need of behavioral change. However, this type of leadership can also be dangerous for program sustainability, as well as for popular support. Public office positions are political positions, with a given period between direct elections. A policy for street vendors in Jakarta, for instance, affects the urban poor in particular for decades. It means the governor would need to ensure that his program would last, preferably beyond his term. To do that, support from the local administrators would be needed to make sure the whole administration was working together to realize the policy. Without that, the program could be easily hijacked by various means — usually technicalities such as delays, ignoring letters that need to be stamped and sent. Here we can learn from James Scott, a scholar who studied peasants, on the weapons of the weak, who stated that the weakest, including the lowest of city mandarins, can resist in their modest way. Policy efficiency can be dangerous because it tends to exclude people, the urban poor in this context, from policy-making. Efforts to include public participation only focus on listening to public voices, not assuring their inclusion in policy content. Participation as a technique to involve people guarantees process, not results. This is because participation in policy-making takes up time and is thus inefficient. What matters most in figure-based leadership is how the leaders can ensure the sustainability of their policies, rather than a quick policy process that may later result in the end of their policy and programs once they are no longer in office. ●