Remember when President Joko Widodo and Merah Putih Coalition (KMP) leader Prabowo Subiyanto seemed all chummy before the inauguration, with Jokowi promising to visit the ex-general’s house for dinner and Prabowo promising KMP would support Jokowi? Remember how we naively hoped, just for a minute, that the next five years would not be dominated by partisan political maneuvering and power struggles?
Yeah, that didn’t last long.
After all the fervor over Jokowi’s inauguration and his new cabinet had quieted down, Prabowo’s KMP, which controls a 314-246 member majority in the House and the House leadership positions, immediately got back to the business of consolidating their power in the DPR. Yesterday, the coalition managed to appoint their own members to head up all 11 House commissions.
The Great Indonesia Coalition (KIH), which is made up of Jokowi’s PDI-P party and others that support them, knew that they had no way to stop KMP from taking the leadership of the House commissions, so they boycotted the meetings.
According to The Jakarta Globe, KIH has set up its own “shadow leadership” to fight back against KMP and issue a vote of no confidence in the House leadership (“shadow leadership” sounds much cooler than it actually is, since they have no official powers, or even ninjas.)
So, for those of you keeping score, KMP now has a majority in the House, the House speaker, all of the House commission heads and the speaker of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR). Oh, and they might have killed direct elections for regional leaders, maybe.
If KMP wanted to, they could make life extremely difficult for Jokowi’s government. Hell, if they wanted to, they pretty much have the power now to impeach Jokowi and install Prabowo as our new dictator.
How will Jokowi fight back now? Hopefully he’s got something up his short-sleeve besides the KIH “shadow leadership.”
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