Artikel tulisan ini diberi tema 'Mr Joko goes to Jakarta'. Pada tulisan pembukanya, majalah ini menulis Jokowi yang sedang duet dengan grup musik dari Inggris, Arkarna pada 31 Mei lalu. Saat itu Jokowi menyanyikan lagu 'Nonton Bioskop'. Konser saat itu digelar di Tenis Indoor Senayan, Jakarta.
"Sulit membayangkan Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono memakai jaket kulit dipadu kaos bergambar sebuah band rock," demikian tulis The Economist edisi 8 Juni 2013.
The Economist tidak bisa membayangkan jika yang berduet dengan Arkarna itu adalah seorang presiden. Sebab, Jokowi tengah digadang-gadang menjadi calon presiden.
Sosok Presiden SBY selama ini dikenal tampan, gagah dan berwibawa. Sementara Jokowi terlihat kurus, ramah dan gaya bicaranya kurang lancar. "Jokowi itu tetangga semua orang," demikian kata konsultan politik Eep Saefulloh Fatah.
Di tengah hasil survei yang menempatkan Jokowi di urutan teratas tingkat elektabilitasnya, Jokowi sering disebut-sebut akan maju sebagai calon presiden. Tapi beberapa kalangan sudah menyarankan agar Jokowi tidak maju sebagai capres dalam Pemilu 2014.
Menurut The Economist, Jokowi mengaku telah didekati tiga partai politik untuk maju sebagai calon presiden. Sedangkan dua partai lagi menawarinya sebagai calon wakil presiden. Meski menjadi rebutan partai, sejauh ini tidak ada sinyal Jokowi akan membelot dari PDIP.
Dalam berbagai kesempatan, Jokowi mengaku tidak ingin terganggu dengan hasil survei. Ia ingin fokus menjadi Gubernur DKI Jakarta untuk membenahi persoalan Ibu Kota seperti banjir dan kemacetan.
Saat ini, pesaing terberat Jokowi adalah Prabowo Subianto. Ketua Dewan Pembina Partai Gerindra itu elektabilitasnya juga tinggi. Prabowo juga punya peluang besar karena mengendalikan partai sendiri daripada Jokowi.
Selain Prabowo, ada nama Gita Wirjawan. Menteri Perdagangan itu namanya juga populer. Selain itu ada Aburizal Bakrie, tapi Ketua Umum Partai Golkar ini elektabilitasnya kecil.
Berikut Berita Dari The Economist. :
IT IS hard to picture Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia’s dignified if slightly pompous president, clad in a leather jacket over a T-shirt advertising a rock band. Yet that is how the man who is already the favourite to succeed him appeared on May 31st, to sing at a concert in Jakarta by the British group Arkarna. Joko Widodo, Jakarta’s governor, has only been a national figure for a year or so. But already conversations about his future have turned from speculation about whether he nurtures presidential ambitions to questions about what can possibly thwart him in an election due in July next year.
Mr Joko, known to all by his nickname, Jokowi, is not yet a declared candidate, and when asked, stresses his duty to Jakarta, where he was elected only last September. Congested, flood-prone and scarred by squalid slums, Indonesia’s capital sorely needs the competent and honest administration he has promised. He turns 52 this month, and some advisers are urging him to defer a presidential bid until the next election in 2019. But recent opinion polls put Jokowi so far ahead of rivals for 2014 that pressure is mounting on him to desert Jakarta and run. He has told friends that three political parties have already approached him as a potential presidential candidate, and another two want him to fill the vice-presidential slot.
Nothing so far hints at disloyalty to his own party, the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), led by Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of Indonesia’s first president and who herself held the job in 2001-04. Becoming president is a two-stage process. A parliamentary election next April precedes the presidential poll. Candidates in that have to be nominated by parties. In the system used in the previous election in 2009, which is unlikely to be changed for 2014, to nominate a presidential candidate, parties or coalitions need at least 20% of the seats or 25% of the popular vote in the parliamentary election.
Miss Megawati, defeated in 2004 and 2009 by Mr Yudhoyono, who is known as “SBY”, may yet want to have another tilt at the presidency. Or more likely she realises that Jokowi is the stronger candidate but, by deferring an announcement of his candidacy until nearer the election, hopes to protect him from a pre-emptive onslaught by his opponents. She must be aware that Jokowi, who stalwartly spends his weekends campaigning for PDI-P candidates in local elections, has other options.
Of the reasons for his phenomenal popularity, the biggest is that, in a country where “politician” has become almost a synonym for “crook”, he is seen as honest. So was Mr Yudhoyono—a big reason for his election wins in 2004 and 2009. But the president has failed to curb rampant corruption. Indeed, partly because an active anti-corruption commission (the KPK) is constantly unearthing new scandals, it is easy to believe the problem has worsened. The nearest Jokowi has come to being accused of graft is in accepting a gift of a bass guitar signed by a member of Metallica, a heavy-metal band (he has a penchant for loud rock music). The KPK confiscated it, and is to exhibit it in a museum.
Second, Jokowi is in some senses the “anti-SBY”. Mr Yudhoyono is tall, handsome, orotund, aloof and, say Indonesians, “presidential”. Jokowi is small, friendly, chatty yet rather inarticulate and, in the words of Eep Saefulloh Fatah, a political consultant, “everybody’s neighbour”. Everyone has an anecdote about Jokowi’s fundamental decency—or, to the cynic, his deeply ingrained political instincts. A journalist following him through a gruelling day when Jakarta flooded in January tweeted his urge to give him a hug. Noticing he looked tired, Jokowi had called the man’s editor to suggest he send a replacement.
Jokowi is also the “anti-candidate”. The most popular of the other likely contenders is Prabowo Subianto, who leads his own party, Gerindra, and is seen as a decisive leader, in contrast to the consensual, dithering SBY. He headed the special forces under Suharto, the dictator overthrown 15 years ago, to whose daughter he was once married. Mr Prabowo is accused of human-rights abuses, such as kidnapping student activists in the dying days of Suharto’s rule. Mr Yudhoyono, also a Suharto-era general, is struggling to find a candidate for his Democratic Party. Favourite for now seems to be Gita Wirjawan, the trade minister, a former investment banker with little popular following. Golkar, the party that used to give Suharto a veneer of democratic legitimacy, is likely to nominate Aburizal Bakrie, a wealthy but unpopular businessman. Miss Megawati herself was fighting and losing elections even when Suharto was ordaining the outcome.
Indonesian liberals and foreign experts on the country are also enthused by Jokowi. Nobody thought that Indonesia would become a model democracy overnight. The hope, however, has been that after a drastic political decentralisation in 2001 it would start producing grass-roots politicians with a record of efficient and honest administration who would progress to national politics. Jokowi is the proof that democracy works. After a successful career as a self-made businessman selling furniture, he became mayor of the central-Javanese town of Solo, and did a good job, providing a launch-pad for his Jakarta campaign.
Ahok ahoy!
Jokowi’s other appealing trait is that, although an observant Muslim
in an overwhelmingly Islamic country, he seems prepared to take risks
for a secular, pluralistic future. His running-mate in Jakarta was
Basuki Tjahja Purnama, known as Ahok, a Christian and a member of the
ethnic-Chinese minority, which has suffered discrimination and at times
persecution. If Jokowi does forsake his municipal duties for the
presidency, Ahok will take over. During Jokowi’s campaign for governor,
some of his opponents, attempting to appeal to voters’ prejudices,
warned them that he might not finish the job. But Jokowi’s fans would
surely forgive his abandoning the capital for the biggest political
prize of all.
