INTRODUCTION

From being a furniture businessman in the Javanese city of Surakarta, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo became the city's mayor in 2005, then Governor of Jakarta in 2012, and finally went on to win the Indonesian presidential election in 2014. To assume the highest political office of the land after a formal political career of merely nine years is exceptional by any standard. Needless to say, Jokowi's meteoric rise as a political celebrity has created much hype and expectations, both domestically and internationally. Jokowi's supporters see him as the champion who will finally bring about clean and efficient governance in Indonesia, while international analysts interpret his victory as a close call in favour of democracy (Aspinall and Mietzner 2014).

I would like to suggest that Jokowi's rise as a political star was possible because of significant changes in the political system in Indonesia. The implementation of political decentralization or what is known as “regional autonomy” since the end of Soeharto's New Order era in 1998 led to the emergence of regional political elites (Lane 2014). In particular, the direct election of leaders since 2004, from mayors to district heads, governors and the president, democratized the electoral process, and made these elections a broad contest of popularity among a wide range of candidates. Many work without robust party structures and ideological platforms, and established political parties often play a secondary role. In what follows, I will consider the rise of the political figure in Indonesian politics and its relationship with political parties in practice.

POLITICAL FIGURES AT THE CENTRE OF DECENTRALIZATION

With the end of the New Order regime, Indonesia embarked on the road of democratization and decentralization. The promulgation of Law No. 22/1999 and Law No. 25/1999 gave greater political authority and control over revenues to the districts and municipalities. These became key administrative units for the implementation of “regional autonomy” and they proliferated, growing from 341 districts and municipalities in 1999 to 440 in 2004, and now to more than 500. At the same time, with the devolution of power and revenue to these regional administrative units, regional political elite emerged and entrenched themselves, sometimes as political dynasties, such as the Sochib family in Banten (Buehler 2013; Hamid 2014).