 Hello I'm Liam Gammon and this is New Mandala TV. I'm a PhD candidate at the Department of Political and Social Change at the ANU's College of Asia and Pacific. I'm joined here today by Greg Feely who researches Islamic politics and religious life in Indonesia. I'm with Arianto Patundru who is an economist at the ANU's Indonesia project and a fellow political and social change PhD candidate, P Warburden, who studies the politics of resource nationalism in Indonesia. Now as we're recording this video President Jokowi Dodo or Jokowi as we'll henceforth refer to him is in Washington DC and he's about to meet, have a dinner in his honor with John Kerry. He's about to meet Barack Obama in the Oval Office and be fated by US business leaders and most importantly have dinner with the CEO of Apple. Now just a few years ago if I'd have said the mayor of Solo would be meeting with Barack Obama in the Oval Office people would have looked at you as if you were a bit crazy. So you nevertheless it's happened. So in a sense it's only been quite recently that we've really got a feeling for the kind of man that Jokowi is and the kind of political leader that he is. So I just want to open up this chat today by asking what do you think is the most interesting or surprising thing that we've learned about Jokowi the man, his character in his first 12 months. Something that we didn't, that wasn't revealed to us wasn't apparent before he became president. Well if I start it has been a meteoric rise but in some ways at least from where I stand Jokowi has become a more enigmatic figure the higher he has risen and when we hear some of the stories from the palace reported in the media and elsewhere about how his personal behavior is changing how he's becoming more formal and the like he is clearly a politician in the process of development. I think one of the things that surprised about the last year has been the lack of political fortitude that he's shown particularly in facing down other powerful forces in his coalition. His willingness to compromise on matters that we previously thought were very dear to him such as having reform minded economically rational people in the cabinet people with strong crack track records. Most of those things were unexpected and I for one am still not sure what the prospects are for Jokowi to improve his presidential performance in the remaining four years because in some ways he's slightly improved his position in other ways I think we seem to have a fairly fixed pattern of him not paying attention to a whole lot of reform issues focusing on economic issues but most importantly of all not doing anything to cause ructions within his cabinet and that means that he has become a politician much like many of the people whom he's replaced. Essentially it's business as usual is that the feeling for what the next four years? Largely it's that there are some distinctive things about Jokowi the people who has around him in some ways the people whom he trusts most in some ways are a different kind of person to the kind of people that SBY or or Megawati would have had around them but nonetheless I think he's still far too concerned about political stability and he has no sense of brinksmanship about him and really for him to have broken through the those conventional boundaries of Indonesian politics to really put a distinctive stamp on his presidency he needed to have an element of that taking on his enemies and that would have seen I think an entirely different dynamic in politics now in Indonesia but I suspect a great many of the coalition partners feel that they have his measure and they know if they put pressure on him that he will not that he will yield the the the economy and the president's outlook on the economy is one of those areas where the evidence is so confounding and confusing so I want to ask you for the first I suppose nine or ten months or so of the administration they came in for some very very heavy criticism about interventionist and protectionist policies on trade restricting the ability of expatriates to work in Indonesia making you know price controls and so on and so forth yet in the last few months we've got a real kind of change in tone in some areas the appointment of Thomas Lombong a real man of a real liberal persuasion as trade minister a change in rhetoric from the palace which focuses upon improving the business climate and for the last few fortnights we've seen these sort of this drip feed of announcements of cutting red tape in areas like taxation and business licensing and so on so do you think that this change in tone is really anything substantial or is it really a matter of branding well first of all the reshuffle was just over two months ago right so it's probably too early to judge the performance of the new ministers but if the remarks by for example minister Thomas Lombong after his inauguration is of any indication I think we have hope and for example he said that we have to undo these protectionist measures because such measures actually backfires in the end so I think that's a good sign and these packages as you know the government has just launched five packages looking at the content I think there are hopes especially on the trade front for example there is close to not require recommendation from Minister of Agriculture and Industry anymore for import of say sugar and not requiring double check or survey from survey Indonesia for something that is already checked in the customs so these I think is a good sign but again it's just two months we we never know that I hope they will walk to talk right so and also now that the government President Jokowi himself is now in in US to persuade investors if you like I think it's a good sign I mean in the first year people have been saying that actually Jokowi might not be very interested in international you know communities unlike SBY for example but now he's trying to at least we see the sign that he's trying to be pragmatic and to be more investor friendly if you like so yeah there's hope. I'd like to just ask one issue that has really come to the fore during the first year of Jokowi's presidency is trade in agricultural commodities and the idea of sort of self-sufficiency or independence in food right that has become a real kind of touchstone for a lot of nationalist politicians in Indonesia. Jokowi himself has seen keen on this so isn't it a bit of a contradiction to have this stated goal of food self-sufficiency yet at the same time promising liberalization in trade? Yeah contradiction is a good way to put it I think so he has ministers but not all of them see eye to eye so I don't think well I think Thomas Lemung I hope he will become a better trade minister but there is this minister of agriculture who keeps pushing on self-sufficiency and I think it's not the right time it's not the right policy at the moment especially for example sufficiency in all these commodities rice, sugar, soybean and others and the fact that El Nino is coming it's going to make it far worse and saying that the stocks are enough and we just know it's not enough because the price keeps increasing and if the price of this basic commodity increase it actually hurts the poor so I'm hoping that Padarmin for example the coordinating minister can actually you know sort of navigate these different views in the in the cabinet towards a better outcome yeah yeah just just more broadly do we think or do we have any idea if Jokowi himself has any kind of solid convictions on economic matters or is he simply going on the advice of people around him? That's a difficult question but I think his well first of all he's a pragmatic and I think at the end of the day he will see that the stock is not there and for example and fiscal space is also not enough so like the the the events in the last few days we can see that he actually understands what's the problem and what the problems are and I think well he seems like a very good leader but unfortunately he probably likes of macro narrative if you like so it probably takes some time but the recent indications think give us some hope that he is actually learning that things are not as good as he has been taught by his for example Minister of Agriculture. If you've been doing research on the political economy of the resources sector in Indonesia which is quite a mess of political economy if there ever was one so Jokowi did actually come to office with sort of a personal interest in reforming the mining sector and cleaning up some of the vested interests and rent seeking that occurs in that industry so what went wrong because it's it doesn't seem to have taken place. Yes yes that's right if we cast our minds back to the presidential campaign Jokowi did indeed sort of sell this narrative that he was going to rid the sector this very strategic sector of energy and mining of of vested interests and in Indonesia the term is the mafia and indeed I think in the first few months there were really positive signs that he was committed to reform in this sector and the first the first sign of progress was the appointment of Sudhiraman side to the minister for energy and mineral resources and and prior to to Jokowi under SBY we had this we had political appointees we had appointments of people who are what widely seen as kind of political operators and corrupt indeed and so with the appointment of Sudhiraman side we for the first time in a long time had widely regarded as a clean minister pragmatic minister lots of experience in the bureaucracy so that was a really good sign he also went ahead and appointed an independent team to provide recommendations to him on how to clean up the oil and gas sector which we is notoriously corrupt in particularly the importing of oil into Indonesia so those were really good signs but then I think and this is we see this not just in this sector but that this contradiction and and chaos in fact in and erratic behavior in the way Jokowi approaches policy and approaches reform so on the one hand he was pointing to progress to reform and on the other hand at the same time we see many cases where Jokowi has bent to the pressure of vested business interests particularly within his own coalition and so just to just to point to one case study in particular you know right at the same time as he appointed this independent team to look into corruption in oil and gas imports he then gave the green light to Saudi Apollo the head of the National Democratic Party one of his coalition partners to go ahead and and organize facilitate an importing deal with Angola through one of Saudi Apollo's own private business partners from China it was incredibly dubious terrible optics but again this is this contradiction that that Jokowi you know that we can't he's unpredictable in the way he approaches these reforms and I think it says it speaks to perhaps his own lack of understanding and naivety of the way that these rents the rent seeking works in the sector but I think also it it reflects the kind of superficial commitment to transparency and there are many other cases we could of course point to as well I mean in a broader sense and we look at some of the the way he makes decisions that affects the interests of people around him is he well aware that he's being put under pressure by rent seekers invested interests or is it a question of he doesn't know a dodgy confidant when he sees one what's our feeling on that I think with a particular case that I just mentioned I think that and we know this from other cases as well sometimes jukowi signs things that he doesn't read sometimes he doesn't do his research I think it did in that case demonstrate perhaps it was a political deal made in advance perhaps he just really didn't understand the nature of the deal and didn't know who this Chinese investor was or this broker was but I think in other cases and again I would refer to the mining sector jukowi is aware that he is constantly managing the vested business interests of the elites around him I mean it's public knowledge that the vice president Yusuf Kala has interests in the mining sector that of course Odeopalo and then indeed look at Panjaitan his former chief of staff and now one of the coordinating ministers has direct interests in the sector and jukowi is constantly trying to balance these interests but he does a very poor job of it and it has an effect on on the direction of policy and on some of the the government's decisions on key strategic contracts with big big foreign oil and gas and mining companies and I think that to a large extent what we had hoped is that jukowi would attempt to insulate his minister from these vested business and and vested political interests and instead he's he's hot and cold with with his minister and often abandons him and I think that that speaks to I think perhaps also what what Greg mentioned in terms of his own personal character as well just add to that Liam that sometimes I think in the foreign media an impression is given that jukowi is something of a very purely a very pure politician and something of an ingenue and I think one of the mysteries with him is that on the one hand he does look as if he's out of his depth politically and we've got the case that he'd mentioned about Saripalo and Sampo but and other cases we know from his time as governor of Jakarta and mayor of Solo that he was quite prepared to do political deals and what's more he was quite prepared prepared to use sensitive information that came into his possession as leverage against parties in the local parliaments to make sure that they pass things that he wanted to get through so this was very much a practical politician at work and that for me is one of the mysteries about jukowi working out at what point we suddenly get jukowi the operator prepared to take on prepared to do things are a little bit questionable to achieve an end and at what point we suddenly get jukowi is the person who is compliant and and that's one of the things that I think we're all trying to work out about jukowi at the moment I mean after having piled on to him collectively over the past year I mean can we see anything that's worth defending in this in this in this administration are there any areas where he has actually used the political tools that are available to him to one sort of pursue something that he really cares about well from economic front I think one of the policies that has been applauded is the removal of the pure subsidy just in what is it for five months he was in the office and I think that's a very good policy it is it was unpopular but he did it and of course we now want to see the effect the safe money is now according to the government is really given to infrastructure which is of course is very needed for development at the moment but in the future we also want to see you know allocation reallocation for education and health for example so yeah that's one of the policies that I think he uses common sense and good politics now of course you can't talk about jukowi's infrastructure drive without talking about the role of China in Indonesia's foreign relations and increasingly the economy is there a feeling that jukowi and the government understand the geopolitical consequences of in some ways quite publicly aligning themselves with Chinese economic power I'm not sure whether jukowi understands the geo the geopolitics of cozying up to China I think that yes we have seen jukowi open the doors to Chinese investments certainly in the minerals and energy sector they need investment there's been a big push to to to develop the downstream industrialization of the resource sectors and China has been a huge player in that and they need that sort of investment we've also seen the recent decision to choose a Chinese investor over a Japanese investor for a big rail infrastructure project in Indonesia so we can see that the government is obviously prioritizing and is interested in Chinese investment but then publicly the media has been quite critical of some of these decisions and we are beginning to see a bit of public debate about whether Indonesia should be closing up in this way to China but I don't know I'm not sure I can I can speak to whether jukowi himself or those in his executive are thinking in terms of the geopolitics of this I don't know if Greg wants to comment on that one thing I'd say is that the Chinese have been very effective in cultivating jukowi presidency went to Indonesia and spent three days there which is a long time for the Chinese president to be there in April when Indonesia was marking the 60th anniversary of the Asia-Africa summit and so the Chinese have been investing a great deal of time in persuading Indonesian leaders of the merits of their various projects that they're putting forward to my mind this is one of the questions one has to ask about jukowi we'd previously thought that he was very development minded and could be quite technocratic and rational but in the case of the fast-train project between Jakarta and Bandung that he was referring to this is a classic case in point the the Japanese got the contract to build the the subway the MRT in Jakarta or they're the main contractor and there's a sense in Indonesia that these deals have to be shared around but if you look at Japan's record in building high-speed railways and China's record you would say there's really no argument the Japanese have got a superb record of reliable investment in Indonesia high engineering standards everything they build works well the Chinese have got a very chequered history in Indonesia the power stations they built often never get more than 30 or 40 percent of their design capacity in the like because there are also some problems with them so by rights if the government was doing this on the basis of merit that project should have gone to the Japanese and I think we've seen anger on the part of the Japanese government which is unprecedented towards Indonesia and indeed towards any other country I think for a long long time because they felt as if their claim was so much stronger than Japan the Chinese so clearly Jokowi felt as if on this matter some special treatment towards and privilege treatment towards the Chinese would be a good thing I think it's going to turn out to be a bad thing for Indonesia I must say I agree that this railway incident has heard a reputation of Indonesian international forum and so I'm hoping that Jokowi can you know learn from it and especially now that there is this new thing TPP okay which China is not part of but also on the other hand there is RCEP regional comprehensive economic partnership agreement with China is a part of so Indonesia should really be careful in in in dealing with this and because at the same time Indonesia is also preparing itself for the AAC as an economic community so all these things have has to be in the eye of Jokowi also perhaps I should have mentioned that before I mean Luhut Panjaitan this very important minister and Jokowi himself have not ruled out in fact they've made almost teasing comments about the possibility of Indonesia joining the the TPP do you think that's a realistic scenario it is probably but in terms of time Indonesia has been investing on AAC and RCEP so I think in terms of priority they should really focus on these two former negotiations which is actually both of them are ending this negotiation this year right so TPP is next in the agenda because Indonesia is part of it's not part of the TPP but for AAC and RCEP of course Indonesia is there and RCEP is basically ASEAN plus six right so China Korea India Australia also New Zealand are part of this and I think Indonesia should pay attention more towards what is going on in the region but at the same time of course TPP is also important because it's it covers a lot of economy in the world and the idea of both TPP and RCEP actually to streamline all these conflicting rules as a result of FTS bilateral FTS which is making some kind of spaghetti bowl effect so it's a good thing if Indonesia can maybe lead ASEAN for these two initiatives AAC and RCEP. I think it's fair to say that in Jokowi we see a president that is perhaps far less concerned with his own image overseas and perhaps even with Indonesia's image overseas compared to President Yudhoyono I mean Australians will be familiar with the execution of two of our nationals in February this year the current Hayes crisis that's engulfing Southeast Asia and of course like you said some of these issues to do with investment climate and perceived openness to foreign investment. How much do you think of this so-called resurgence in nationalism that we're hearing about particularly in the foreign media can be sheeted home to Jokowi his own example or perhaps a lack of leadership on his part or how much of this was just going to happen anyway. I think that's an interesting question because if we look at some of the sort of policy manifestations of this kind of increased assertiveness in the nationalist tone of politics in Indonesia some of the more nationalist policies and nationalist rhetoric that we observe in the mineral mining sector were very much part of SBY's administration and his last term so to an extent you know in my own research I've been seeing this trend toward more assertive nationalism for some time but I think that we can see the presidential elections as almost a turning point in the kind of mainstreaming of this more aggressive nationalism and we can we can point partly to the kind of campaign that Prabowo launched that was very aggressive and it kind of painted this this picture of Indonesia as a country that was regularly exploited and shamed by its neighbors and by foreign investors and I think that I think that perhaps many political elites saw that as resonating with the Indonesian public's and perhaps that could explain to an extent why Jokowi has picked up on that and used that in ways that we hadn't expected and why particular ministers have picked up on that and used that in ways that we wouldn't have expected but I don't know perhaps Greg wants to Yeah I think I think it's true about Jokowi I think the the world outside Indonesia for Jokowi is of interest to him in so far as Indonesia can learn from other countries and also make money out of them by exporting Indonesian products or bringing in the kind of investment that allows him to achieve these very ambitious goals that he set for his infrastructure program or so to a less extent for health and education and you mentioned the executions Liam I think that's a very good example where one of the things that was said to him by a senior advisor was if the economy was growing at seven percent but president well then perhaps it wouldn't matter if you're executing all these people from foreign countries but when the economy is actually doing poorly and is growing below what five percent well then actually you cannot afford to be alienating all these foreign countries and that was packaged in a way that that person thought Jokowi would understand the moment it hit Indonesia's ability to get what it wanted from the world outside well then that became a concern to him and I think he's actually an extraordinarily insular president in that regard with a very instrumental view of how he sees foreign relations anyway and the narrowest agenda that we've seen of any president I think in Indonesian history and so we also see the markedly different messages he has for an international audience where he's trying to get investment and promote exports and the very nationalistic rhetoric he has when he's dealing with Indonesian audiences we see it we from outside see a clear contradiction in this it's another one the mysteries for Jokowi whether that is a contradiction in his own mind or all of these things can be rationalized but I think it's going to be a problem for him because more and more people will see him as being inconsistent now of course one of the things that was a real stain on the legacy of the Yudhiana government was the deterioration in the rights and security of religious minorities in Indonesia now Jokowi came to office known for being not particularly orthodox Muslim and his party that nominate him sees itself as the vanguard sort of of Indonesian pluralism so has that made a difference or are we still seeing that continued decline in religious pluralism in Indonesia if we look at it's a mixed picture if we look at the statistics from the NGOs that collect data on religious conflict religious violence and harassment the figures are better better for the last year or so than what they've been through the final years of the SBY period however Jokowi himself can take I think very little credit for that he has a religious affairs minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin who has been the most progressive of any religious affairs minister going back probably at least 12 years and he's not unalloyed in his promotion of religious tolerance he also picks his battles and at times makes strategic retreats but overall I think most people accept that he is trying to make Indonesia a more religiously tolerant place in the case of Jokowi there are almost no statements on the public record about religious tolerance we do have responses to particular incidents of violence such as the Tohlikara case in in Papua and in fact state officials responded very well to that and they were able to prevent that from spreading much more widely we've had a somewhat similar response to the church burning in Aceh but overall the disappointment with Jokowi is that he hasn't set a tone of tolerance himself and we can look at this not just in religious field but more broadly in political sphere so in the last few weeks we've had controversies over such things as the ability of the Shiite community in Indonesia to celebrate the Asura festival one of the main festivals on the religious calendar of Shia Muslims there's been no statement from the government about that which is very disappointing also we see the closing down of the public discourse of public discussion about the mass killings in 1965 and both of these things are surprising because Jokowi's main political affiliation is with Megawati's PDIP the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle and that party has within its parliamentary representation a prominent Shia intellectual and it also has several people who come from former communist families families of victims of these killings and so PDIP of all parties has a track record of defending not only secular rights but also an open historical judgment of these critical events in Indonesian history what we see under Jokowi is a narrowing a closing down of a lot of that debate and that for me was entirely unexpected and that shows that Jokowi to some extent is captive of very conservative elements in the military and he's not giving any pushback to these very regressive moves that those people are seeking to undertake on the other side of the ledger though for the to an extent Jokowi has a better sort of relationship or rapport with progressive elements of Indonesian civil society in the Indonesian political system his new chief of staff is the one of the founders of a key anti-corruption NGO he has the ability to communicate with sort of liberals in civil society and so on is there any kind of pattern to who he listens to and who he ignores because it seems like he gets advice from all corners but like you said listens to the conservatives does that reflect a just a fundamental conservative ideological outpour on his part well i'll just quickly answer a little bit about my view is that one thing he's turning out to be far more intellectually narrow president than what i had previously imagined in fact he cares about a relatively small range of things and some of the rhetoric during the campaign for the president election campaign indeed is Gita Jakarta governor in fact i now suspect was scripted for him and he himself had very little input to that so these issues of religious tolerance of human rights of continuing political reform i think he regards those as expendable they are second or third order matters what most matters for him is development is economic growth particularly dealing with the the poorer people of indonesia and that's all very virtuous i'm not criticizing that but i wish that he had a broader vision of what his presidency could be and that's what he likes so he does have these progressive people around him but you rarely hear him investing in those progressive views in public and i don't really think he feels at all confident in doing something indeed i mean it seems like if you can actually frame a reactionary political agenda in the kind of language of development and economics that appeals to him you can get him to do some remarkable things for instance a recent this recent decree that he signed that protects local officials from prosecution for corruption has he bought into this idea that actually the anti-corruption effort is getting in the way of so-called development yes but and this is again one of the most surprising i think developments over the past year is that jacobi the president who was very much supported by anti-corruption activists reform activists and so we all expected him i guess to to implement and to pursue those sorts of reforms and what was surprising is how quickly he he abandoned the the anti-corruption drive and there are many reasons i think why he did that but it demonstrates i think a fickleness in the way he approaches policy and the way he approaches people and what's surprising is that it's under jacobi's watch not under a previous president that we've seen the attack on anti-corruption on the corruption eradication commission he enabled the criminalization of their directors he's enabling the parliament to attack the law on anti-corruption in the in the parliament and he's also as you said liam he's now kind of singing the song of the old elites in terms of anti-corruption being a hindrance to efficiency and to development and that these anti-corruption activists get in the way of the business of government and i think that's really dangerous in fact yeah what do you think i think that's also applies to economic front i mean we have said about contradiction and at the end of the day it's all a matter of who has jacobi's ears right so we we we see very contradictory signals for if he talks about agriculture for example and then investment because different ministers have different views and even contradictory at time so it's unfortunate that it all matters of who gets his ears because he himself seems to be lacking the narratives you mentioned that someone who has his ear and that brings up another little detail of his presidency he's not known for being a reader is he he doesn't seem to like another one of these actors who has sort of clogged their own agenda in the language of national development is the military now there's been quite a bit of speculation about how serious the military's efforts to sort of sneak its way back into areas of civilian governance have been under the jacobi presidency do you think that's it's too early to be alarmed or is is something really significant going on here it looks like it could be developing a kind of momentum that would make one concerned because we have a consistent pattern of senior military and defense officials including the defense minister coming out and making statements that and indeed taking the initial steps to put in place programs that would greatly expand the role of military within society and much when the so-called reformasi process began in 1998 after sahara was forced from office one of the key targets of the reformers was the military that wanted the military as much as possible back in the barracks and what we've seen under jacobi to an extent that again was a very one of the really surprising things about his presidency is how he either didn't care or indeed was happy to go along with the military coming back out of the barracks and being involved in village development distributing food building bridges and roads engaging in ideological campaigns on campuses taking a much bigger role in counterterrorism even providing staff for prisons so there are a whole range of things that have been proposed and some new quite extensive moves that are now underway such as having ineffective civilian defense force that might be as many as a hundred million people and everyone under the age of 50 is obliged to be involved there's been not that broader range of opposition to that at the moment but we just see in the next year when people consider the cost of this when they when ordinary citizens start working out how disruptive this might be and indeed whether it's at all necessary under current circumstances in which indonesia really doesn't face a legitimate threat anywhere in the region whether this is all worthwhile or is this a military self-interested military pushing these programs i'm hoping that it's the latter that that people begin to push back against this and that the efforts of the of the current tni the current armed forces head and the current defense minister will end up facing serious resistance but at the moment you'd have to say they have wind in their sails now just one last question i i i know it seems a bit silly to um speculate about the 2019 election so far out but let's do it anyway um there have been several polls that have come out in the last week or so in conjunction with the one-year anniversary of jacquoise inauguration um they've actually started measuring um the electability of uh candidates for the election uh in four years time prabo subhiyanto looks like he's still very much a contender where is prabo now what's he doing and what is his agenda for the next four years i would just say he might try again and he will fail again you're confident that jacquoise will be re-elected um i'm not saying that but i'm saying that prabo will not become the president any speculation i wouldn't rule out um him throwing his the hat in the region i think that um we all know how ambitious he is and and how badly he wanted the presidency and even though he's been laying low for the past year um i don't see any reason in fact but barring his health maybe uh why he wouldn't run again um and i mean i'm not sure how much we should read into those polls it's kind of it's quite natural that you know when people are really displeased with the current president that they might look to uh what the alternative might have been and say that that would be better right now if the if the election was held tomorrow that would be better um but i i think that that prabo will certainly um yeah consider running again in 2019 and prabo was played an interesting game because during the election presidential election he was so emphatic in his opposition to everything that jacquoise said and everything that jacquoise represented and you know we saw his challenge to the election result itself so i think a lot of us had the expectation that he would be a very implacable opposition leader and in fact he's proved to be anything but and at times he's been quite willing to cooperate with jacquoise to allow jacquoise to achieve it at times of considerable political pressure for jacquoise prabo always helped him out and he might be doing this for a number of reasons one is that by occasionally accepting jacquoise phone calls and invitations he keeps himself in the political mix as it were jacquoise is consulting him and he's able to increase his own influence um but also there's a lot of reporting that some of his companies aren't doing very well and there is also speculation that some of those companies have been helped out by the government given contracts and so if that's the case well then there is a then there is a material interest that prabo has from helping jacquoise so i'm also fully expecting he will be a presidential candidate in 2019 but relations between the two men hasn't been as or haven't been as arctic as i was expecting them to be and i i do i know i said that was the last question but i suppose we should just address this one remaining sort of puzzle i guess about the jacquoise presidency is that is how easy the opposition in parliament has been uh on the administration um are we seeing this as sort of proof of the the the theory that really um the cost of stability in indonesian politics um is basically putting a reform agenda on ice what do you think why why have they been so docile and why did they go so docile so quickly i think i think you're exactly right if the government had not been going to such effort to accommodate a large number of vested interests well then we wouldn't see this level of cooperativeness from from the parliament and the fact that uh you know you've mentioned before about the the corruption eradication commission and uh and most people in parliament have been gunning for that commission for many years because it has cut down many of their colleagues who indeed were vastly corrupt and they had to come in through them but they want very much to neuter the kpk and uh jacquoise is he vacillates on the issue is is my reading of it but i think they must feel as if they're going they may well get quite a few of the things that they want and we're probably going to have a far less effective leadership of the kpk than we've had in the previous term this group of commissioners have been criminalized facing prosecution so uh that's one example of the kind of thing that jacquoise is doing which in fact keeps parliamentarians happy well as usual i guess it looks like there's a trade-off between uh reform and cordial relations between different elites um guys thanks very much for coming in today appreciate you making the time