The Unholy Alliance

It's now confirmed that the current Indonesian VP, Jusuf Kalla (JK), will be contesting for the presidential election in July as the Golkar candidate with the retired General Wiranto as his running mate from the Hanura party. This is the guy who announced as recently as last year that he would remain loyal to the current president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) and would continue to serve the country in his role as Wapres (wakil presiden). I remember the opposing faction in Golkar pushing for the presidential candidancy of another veteran politician, Akhbar Tandjung, but to no avail. Well, I guess in the end the lure of more power is simply too irresistible for Pak JK, who is arguably one of the richest men in Indonesia and definitely the richest person in his home island of Sulawesi.

What led to his falling out with SBY and the pursuance of his own personal ambition to be the president? One reason could be that he no longer sees a prominent role for himself in SBY's second term - assuming that SBY wins the July election, which is very likely. SBY and his political vehicle, Partai Demokrat (PD), were weak back in 2004 when PD only won about 7 percent of the legislative votes despite winning the presidency on the back of SBY's popularity. SBY and PD needed JK and the legislatively-strong Golkar for political support and to fend off challenges from other opposing parties such as PDI-P and others. For the past five years JK saw himself as a very influential VP as SBY began to rely on his Golkar faction in the parliament (DPR) to pass various legislations. But also at the same time, PD has built a strong party structure nation-wide that feeds off the popularity of the president, which ultimately bears fruit when the party's more than tripling its electoral win to over 20 percent in the recent legislative elections. PD is no longer the weakling party in the DPR as it once was; it's now a major player that gets to decide the future of Indonesian politics. JK and Golkar have now become somewhat irrelevant in the grander scheme of things. Sensing the imminence of his severely diminishing influence in SBY's second term, JK made an abrupt about-face and quickly announced his intention to challenge in the upcoming presidential election.

Anyway, this quote from Jusuf Kalla in MalaysiaKini really cracks me up in its sheer absurdity: "The businessman or military experiences can be used in creating a civil society of a nation, he (Jusuf Kalla) added, without giving any details on the pair's intentions regarding policy."

Okay, first of all, big businesses and the military are NOT known to be the catalyst for civil society. Just read up on modern political history of the world and see which social forces are the MOST anti-democratic and NON-civil: right, the big businesses and the military! They often work hand-in-glove to overthrow popularly-elected democratic governments that go against their narrow self-interested agenda. So, Mister President wannabe, civil society can be many things but certainly not the way you envision it. Just say that you want to be the president because you are power-mad but don't use civil society as your lame excuse. I guess this sort of statement is to be expected when a used car salesman (albeit a very rich one) teams up with a washed-up war criminal in the quest for the highest seat of power in the country.