JakartaPost-Oct 4, 2024
As his presidency enters its final weeks, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has gone on the last leg of a tour across the country, where he will bid farewell to the people and offer apologies for any shortcomings of his decade-long administration. After completing two full terms, Jokowi is set to step down on Oct. 20 and hand over the reins to his successor Prabowo Subianto and vice president-elect Gibran Rakabuming Raka. Gibran Rakabuming Raka, 36, left his successful entrepreneurial career in 2020 to become the mayor of Surakarta in Central Java. Now, the foreign-educated eldest son of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo is setting his sights on the nation’s second-highest office. The President’s schedule has been packed over the last few weeks with work trips to regions around the archipelago to greet people, inspect traditional markets or inaugurate new infrastructure. During his visit this week to a traditional market in East Nusa Tenggara, Jokowi took the opportunity to apologize for all the shortcomings of his administration after checking on the availability and prices of basic goods in the market. The President previously made a similar apology during his visit to local traditional markets in Lubuk Pakam in North Sumatra and Surabaya in East Java, where he inspected prices and chatted with the vendors. The farewell tour comes after Jokowi made his first public apology during an event at the start of the independence month in August, and later in his last State of the Nation address. Offering an apology in rural areas rather than in a formal setting in Jakarta might have been intended to avoid “more public backlash and debate on social media, which largely come from the educated Indonesians who reside in urban cities,” Wasisto Rahardjo of the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) told The Jakarta Post. “Jokowi may feel his apology will be more appreciated by people in the countryside, who felt the direct impact of his policies, especially infrastructure programs,” he said. Read more at: https://www.
