Indonesia's 2014 Elections: How Jokowi Won And Democracy Survived By Marcus Mietzner

According to the journal article, ‘Indonesia’s 2014 Elections: How Jokowi Won and Democracy Survived’, written by Marcus Mietzner, he presented his arguments by using comparative analysis. To analyze Indonesia’s 2014 election, he compared mainly the two president candidates- Probowo and Jokowi. The two candidates actually represented two different concepts on politics in Indonesia, which Mietzner classified in three perspective, namely grassroots volunteerism versus oligarchic machine politics; moderate populist versus radical populist; and, democracy versus authoritarian.
Mietzner began his argument by illustrated the post-Sukarno’s era in Indonesian politics, specifically Yudhoyono’s administration (2004-2014) which ended with corruption
In Indonesia, to be qualified in the presidential nomination, a candidate must gain the support from the party or party coalition that won 20 percents of the parliamentary seats or 25 percents of the total votes. This requirement thus increase the role of party in the direct presidential election system, which Probowo was supported by the main parties to run his campaign effectively in terms of strong financial backup, professional advertisements and voter-mobilization efforts, but this strategy at the same time is engaging in the vote-buying. As opposite situation on the Jokowi’s campaign, his gained support from the public, who volunteered themselves in running the election campaign, who showed more commitments and enthusiasm. Even though he also supported by the political parties for the nomination, those involved parties failed to perform smoothly. Unlike Probowo, Jokowi’s financial support came from the community-based fundraising. This financial support is significant because it is unusual in Indonesia, where the money usually came from limited interest group and candidate himself. The author illustrated his argument in a very detailed manner, for a non-Indonesian to understand that Jokowi’s presidential campaign was run in an unusual form in Indonesia, and this new form gained more support from the voters, which shows the democratization process is
Probowo adopted the populist idea in such a way to imitate Suharto, mobilizing the anti-imperialism sentiment and propose economic nationalism to gain the support from the conservatives and militants. In contrast, Jokowi endorsed the liberal democratic ideas, which in my opinion, as the starting point of Jokowi’s democratization. His ideas on economic and social issues were known as pragmatic and moderate, gaining more support from the female voters compared to