Elections in Indonesia are billed as Pesta Demokrasi, or Democracy Festival. Election Day is a national holiday and voter turnout is regularly above 70 percent. It seemed fitting that in this election’s logistical tour de force, the politician who most exemplifies technocratic competence and moderate rhetoric—Joko Widodo, the incumbent widely known as “Jokowi”—came out on top once again. But if Jokowi was able to beat his opponent on a largely bread-and-butter agenda, he did little to placate disappointed progressive supporters who had hoped for advances in human rights during his tabula rasa campaign of 2014. There has still been no truth and reconciliation process over the mass killings of leftists in 1965, nor any accountability for the security forces’ shooting thousands in 1998 during protests that ultimately forced the ouster of the dictator Suharto. Even two decades, none of this is ever far beneath the surface of Indonesian politics.
