In just a few days Joko Widodo will become the president of Indonesia. To mark the historic occasion, Time magazine decided to put Jokowi on the cover of their latest international edition with the headline “A New Hope” and the subtitle “Indonesian President Joko Widodo is a force for democracy” (what is it about the Jokowi-Prabowo political struggle that makes writers so keen on using Star Wars references?).
The cover is an extreme close-up shot of our new chief executive’s lovably asymmetrical face by photographer Adam Ferguson.
We can’t read the full article because it’s behind a paywall (btw Time, “Subscriber content preview. or Sign in”? What was there before “or Sign in”? Did you just take away our ability to read it for free, just like the Merah Putih Coalition took away our right to direct regional elections? For shame!).
But it seems unlikely that anybody who has any knowledge of Jokowi or Indonesia in general will get much new information from the article. Its lead starts with factoid like “Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous nation,” which apparently Karen Beech or her editors thought was such a little-known piece of information amongst general Time readers it was worth starting their cover story off with.
And the sad thing is, they’re probably right. But still, our new hope is that this will help more of the outside world to get excited about Indonesia and our new president (assuming, of course, he doesn’t get impeached immediately).
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