HE SAYS it himself: expectations have been high since he became president in October, after a gripping election showed how Indonesia’s democratic politics are impressively robust. Joko Widodo, or Jokowi as he is known, promises growth of 7% a year by 2018. Yet for all his fine aspirations, the country underwhelms. The economy is stumbling, growing by 4.7% in the first quarter compared with a year ago, the slowest pace since 2009. But most worrying is Jokowi’s rhetoric of economic nationalism. Rather than an agent of change, he is sounding more like his tub-thumping predecessors. For the sake of 250m Indonesians, he needs to change his tune, and fast.
Promises, promises
A typical Indonesian earns half as much as his Chinese counterpart and a 20th as much as a citizen of nearby Singapore. The farthest-flung parts of the vast archipelago-state suffer from a tyranny of distance, shut off not only from world markets but also from the thriving Javanese economy around the capital, Jakarta. The country has relied too much on mining for coal and gold, and on stripping forests to make way for palm-oil plantations. Cronyism and...
from The Economist: Leaders http://ift.tt/1KlSa9d
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