Joko Widodo a puppet President

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    http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/



    Why Widodo can’t and won’t save Chan and Sukumaran


    Andrew Bolt April 28 2015 (6:26am)


    Indonesia’s president is too weak to grant clemency to Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran even if he wanted to:

    Joko Widodo, who took power just six months ago with stratospheric approval ratings, should have been feted when he appeared before his party’s national congress earlier this month.

    Instead, he was humiliated. As he sat in the front row, his party’s chairperson, Megawati Soekarnoputri, harangued him from the lectern. She said that he owed the presidency to her. She told him to do as he’s told:
    “It goes without saying that the president and vice president must toe the party line,” said Megawati, herself a former president and the daughter of Indonesia’s late founder, Soekarno.

    “As the ‘extended hands’ of the party, you are its functionaries. If you do not want to be called party functionaries, just get out!”
    Megawati’s speech won applause described by the Indonesian media as thunderous. And the president’s speech, which he had with him, ready to be delivered?
    It was not heard. Jokowi, the nickname by which he’s universally known, was denied the opportunity to speak to his party congress. It was, in all, a brutal and calculated putdown.
    He meekly accepted this public humiliation. When reporters asked his response to Megawati’s tirade, he replied: “It was very good.” It was abject. But she is the power behind his throne…
    Jokowi campaigned on the need to be tough on drug offenders. He called for the restoration of the death penalty, suspended by his predecessor. And Megawati is now pressing him hard on the issue. As part of his ritual humiliation at the party conference, she goaded him publicly on the issue:
    “Megawati said to him at the party congress, ‘Why haven’t the executions been carried out already – you aren’t buckling to foreign pressure, are you?’” says Greg Fealy, a leading ANU scholar of Indonesia.
    “The politics is that death penalty is extremely popular in Indonesia, Jokowi is slipping in the polls, he’s desperate to turn it around, and of the available issues this is the most readily available on which he’s looking strong, according to most Indonesians,” says Fealy.
    This is beyond terrible for Chan and Sukumaran. It is also a deep concern for Australia. How can the Abbott Government confide in and negotiate with a President so weak?
 
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