JOKOWI FACES POLITICAL TIPPING POINT
Leader encounters huge challenges in managing pandemic recovery
THE tales of the big pandemics in world history are not only one of hunger, suffering and death. They are also about pandemics testing the ability of leaders to manage the crisis and the political consequences should they fail.
In fact, previous pandemics and the political change they entailed are stories worth keeping in mind. For example, the pandemic of the mid-14th century is known as the Black Plague.
According to historians, the pandemic caused most government officials to become infected, prompting them to lock themselves in their homes until they succumbed to the disease. As more and more leaders died, power vacuums appeared and instability ruled.
By the time the plague disappeared in 1353, the world had started to dramatically change. As one scholar of the Middle Ages noted: “The wages of ordinary farmers and craftsman had doubled and tripled, and nobles were knocked down a notch in social status.
“The church’s hold on society was damaged, and Western Europe’s feudal system was on its way out — an inflection point that opened the way to the Reformation and greater worker gains of the Industrial Revolution and beyond.”
Another example is the Spanish flu, which started in 1918 and lasted for more than two years. The virus is suspected to have had infected 500 million people, nearly one-third of humanity, and caused between 20 million and 100 million deaths.
Not only was the pandemic exceedingly deadly, it also exacerbated the painful economic and social dislocations that occurred in the aftermath of World War 1, prompting uprisings and political change, which, ultimately, transformed the global political order.
Starting in the autumn of 1918, there erupted waves of workers’ strikes, political unrest in Europe with uprisings throughout Poland, the Weimar Republic, Austria, Hungary and Italy, eventually leading to the rise of fascist regimes.
Even in Switzerland, a peaceful nation throughout its history, there was nearly a civil war in the fall of 1918 after leftist groups blamed the government and military for the high number of deaths from the flu.
In my own country, Indonesia, President Joko Widodo or Jokowi, is a prime example of a leader that has horribly mismanaged the pandemic.
In early July, Indonesia had become the epicentre of the pandemic and even surpassed India as the Delta variant spread. New daily cases quickly surged to more than 50,000 a day, forcing the government to ban foreigners from entering the country and implement a new round of lockdowns.
Recently new cases reached below 20,000 per day. But even when the virus’ spread is contained and lockdowns are eased, Indonesia faces the daunting prospect of new surges and lockdowns until the country approaches 70 per cent of the population being fully vaccinated that is needed to reach herd immunity.
But, when will this magical number be finally attained? Not any time soon. So far, only 79 million doses have been administered. Indonesia is still far away from securing enough supplies of vaccines. In fact, the country needs 380 million doses. Having enough vaccines is only half of the equation.
The other half is getting people vaccinated, and for this, the government is facing major logistical challenges in distributing, storing and administering the vaccines. This problem is particularly acute in eastern parts of Indonesia, which largely lack cold storage facilities and sufficient numbers of qualified vaccinators.
Meanwhile, as the government struggles to increase the vaccination rate, scores of Indonesians have fallen into abject poverty. The government has already allocated over a thousand trillion rupiah for fighting the pandemic, yet most Indonesians are left wondering what happened to the money.
Low-income Indonesians are supposed to receive 300,000 rupiah a month from the government, which is less than one dollar per day, barely enough to survive. Adding insult to injury, many times the money is pilfered by unscrupulous government officials and politicians.
In short, the prognosis for Indonesia is extremely poor. So far, the official count of Covid-19-related deaths is more than 100,000 and rising by more than 1,000 a day — a number which would have been much lower had the government better managed the pandemic, but for which the Jokowi has not even issued an apology.
For those looking at Indonesia, the prognosis is equally gloomy. According to the Nikkei Covid-19 Recovery Index, which ranks countries based on their projected ability to recover fully from the pandemic, Indonesia ranks 110 out of the 120 countries in the index.
And in another index performed by The Economist, measuring potential for a full recovery at pre-pandemic levels, Indonesia ranks 47th place out of 50 countries.
In other words, Indonesia will take longer than most to recover, and the longer it takes, the higher the chance of the Jokowi administration reaching a political tipping point.