Episode 54: Stuck in a Rock and a Hard Place

Dialogika Podcast

In this episode, we share our strong feelings about Jokowi's pick for his vice-president, Ma'ruf Amin, a 75-year-old conservative Muslim cleric who's known to espouse extremist and intolerant views when it comes to minorities, in particular the LGBT community as well as other ethnic and religious minorities. We discuss the problematic issues behind this decision, which we believe Jokowi and his coalition made in order to appease and appeal to the far-right Islamic base — an effort that in our opinion will severely alienate young progressive voters and potentially push them to the side of Prabowo and his vice-presidential pick, the current vice-governor of Jakarta, Sandiaga Uno. Our former guests Rocky Intan, Afu Utami, and Febriana Firdaus share their thoughts and reactions to the news, while we also talk about the potential for non-voting and/or protest votes affecting next year's presidential elections. Jokowi's pick has given a lot of Indonesian progressives a really tough decision to make in April 2019.