Azmin looks more like Obama than Jokowi
When Azmin Ali took the Selangor Menteri Besar’s job, he told the press that he was looking to emulate Indonesian President Joko Widodo, fondly known as Jokowi.
Jokowi is the ultimate man of the people. He has chosen the simple life instead of living it up in a mega-mansion. He’s a regular sighting at concerts, especially when the music is metal. When he was Governor of Jakarta, he was famous for regularly getting out of his office to meet the man on the street and hear his complaints. This folksy quality sets him apart from previous Indonesian presidents, who all came from the political elite. Some have hailed him as the second coming of America’s Barack Obama.
It’s still early in Jokowi’s presidency, but he’s already shown that he intends to maintain his low key lifestyle, choosing, for instance, to fly economy and mandating that his ministers do the same. This can only bode well for his image as a whole. And he’s tough when he needs to be, for instance in protecting Indonesia’s territorial rights. He recently declared he would sink Malaysian or Chinese ships found illegally fishing in Indonesian waters, the key word here being “illegally”.
Obama, the first black president of his country, did not come from a life of privilege either. He was heralded as the ultimate agent of change for the United States. He promised that he would repeal some of what were considered America’s worst excesses domestically and internationally. The youth flocked to him, shunning establishment figures like John McCain and Mitt Romney, with their shrill and at times xenophobic right-wing message driving off left-wing and middle ground voters from any legitimate policy ideas they may have had. Obama was the vanguard in restoring America’s badly damaged reputation, and it seemed like he could do no wrong.
While Obama remains popular overseas, he has flip-flopped on several key issues he promised to address during his presidential election campaign. One of his biggest flops is the failure to close down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, a bugbear among liberal Democrats due to its association with human rights abuses. Additionally, there was his reversal on the promise to sign abortion rights legislation, with claims that he had other priorities to address and wanted anger on the issue to die down. Along with many other broken campaign promises, he has also failed to eliminate loopholes in the law on the oil and gas industry.
It would be unfair to Obama to say that all he has done is break promises. Indeed, he has kept or compromised on around 60% of all his campaign promises, but his approval ratings are nothing like they were when he first came to power in 2008. His flip-flopping has certainly not endeared him to the American public, or to the hopeful millenials who played a large hand in his rise to the presidency. To be fair to him, half of his policies were stalled in the Senate due to partisan squabbling, which is not the president’s fault per se but endemic to the us-versus-them rhetoric of current American polity.
Man of the people
Obama and Jokowi have been jokingly referred to as twins of a sort, due to a vague physical resemblance and their people-centric policies. Jokowi still stands to learn from Obama’s failures in the political arena. If he does, he may endure as the promised man of the people he seems to be already. Azmin too must avoid the mistakes of Obama even as he looks to Jokowi as a model.
Azmin started off like a rocket but has since gotten tangled in the mire between promise and policy, forced to flip-flop and compromise, and now reduced to hoping that the media will not cover the issues so that things will quiet down.
Yang Amat Berhormat, it is the duty of the media to report on the issues as the people have a right to know what condition the country or the state is in. Yes, the original point of contention in the Bible issue may have been resolved, but the desecration of an entire faith’s holy book is another indeed. Cowering away from this issue will not lead to any resolution. What may lead to a resolution is to have discussions with all parties involved to see where to proceed from this point onwards.
The rakyat have not forgotten your flip-flopping on the Kidex highway and the Selangor water restructuring deal — issues that you used as leverage to make the case for Khalid Ibrahim’s removal. When its time to get back to the ballot, these issues will haunt you as will any further flip-flopping from the man who believes himself the best candidate to lead Malaysia’s most advanced and most populous state.
If you wish to emulate Jokowi, by all means return to that strong start you had. It is still early in your administration, and there are plenty of chances for you to redeem yourself and your administration and to deliver what the people expect. But should you decide to continue down an Obamaesque path, do not expect the people to be thrilled. Nor should you expect their support should you allow rhetoric to trump policy.
Sign up here with your email
ConversionConversion EmoticonEmoticon