Jokowi and the New Indonesia - A Political Biography

Fülszöveg

In 2014, Joko Widodo—popularly known as Jokowi—was elected the seventh president of the Republic of Indonesia, going on to win a second five-year term in 2019. Raised in a working-class neighborhood on the banks of a river in Central Java, and with a background in the furniture trade, Jokowi broke the mold for political leaders in the world's third-largest democracy. His meteoric rise came without the benefit of personal connections to the traditional elites who have dominated Indonesian politics for three quarters of a century. This new biography tells the story of how the boy from the riverbank made it to the presidential palace in record time. And how his personal background and heritage have created a distinctive style of politics and informed his ambitious development goals—including massive infrastructure projects, universal healthcare and a reimagining of Indonesia's educational system. It also looks at how a man raised with a distinctively Javanese worldview negotiates the tensions, contradictions and conflicts of this vast archipelagic nation.