Luhut, one of Jokowi’s most trusted assistants, is well-known for his no-nonsense management that gets things done, even at the risk of stepping on other ministers’ toes, as long as the action is in line with the government’s policies. His leadership and managerial skills will determine whether the licensing and implementation of investment projects will be greatly expedited.

The lineup of the new Cabinet is bewildering to many, but all the President’s men and women will have to be able to work as a team. A key word seems to be “coordination”.

Jokowi must not emulate Jesus Christ, who like Jokowi was a carpenter, and who selected 12 disciples to help him spread the Gospel.

At the end of the day, the fundamental asset of the economic team is the public’s trust in its integrity. A lack of trust in the economic team among businesspeople would cause problems in policymaking and implementation.

Certainly, President Jokowi has the prerogative to appoint and dismiss his aides, but democracy allows the public to question how he justifies his choices of Cabinet members. We don’t have a dream Cabinet, but we’d better give him the benefit of the doubt and let time tell whether he made the right decisions. 

We should magnanimously concede that the main barrier to the proper enforcement of taxation laws and the poor performance of the tax office so far has not been due to its lack of autonomy, but rather the lack of integrity and technical competence of many of its officials.

Jokowi’s big dream of sweeping bureaucratic reform would actually fulfill his broken promise. There is no more excuse for him to squander his last chance, especially as the Indonesian bureaucracy has been notorious for its low efficiency. With no drastic change in the bureaucracy, Jokowi’s vision of leading Indonesia’s march into the league of high-income countries would be at risk.

Jokowi’s inauguration speech was certainly meant to project strength and resoluteness after months of uncertainty and political jockeying. It appears that Jokowi has got his mojo back and this is the last chance he has to make good on all the promises he made.

The research, made more popular by the exhibition, of course, confirms that our prejudices, and worse racism, against those who look “different”, is downright stupid, toxic and even fatal as reflected by too many assaults on minorities. No one is pribumi (native) as we are all clearly migrants to a greater or lesser extent.

The main causes of our weak export competitiveness are poor and inadequate basic infrastructure, which puts our logistics costs among the highest in Asia, arduous investment and export bureaucracy and inefficient seaport management.

It is more convenient to eat high-fat or spicy food or drink too much coffee and leave our gastric concerns to drugs like ranitidine. It is cheap, available at any drugstore, and can be purchased without a prescription. But this kind of mindset can also be deadly.

The Palapa Ring, taking on the spirit of the 14th century Javanese Majapahit empire, should stay true to Gajah Mada’s famous oath, which lends hope to its name: the program should unite Nusantara, the archipelago, through universal broadband internet.

A strong and technically competent economic team is even more crucial now in view of the string of negative external factors that will be encountered in the coming years and the more difficult reform measures that have to be taken.

We also should not lose hope after Jokowi met with political bigwigs, including Prabowo Subianto and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, with the prospect of giving members of their parties seats in the Cabinet.

The knife attack on Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Wiranto in Pandeglang, Banten, on Thursday, shows that local terrorist cells are far from defeated and that the slightest complacency in the war on terrorism could prove disastrous.

Many surveys have found that a corrupt businessman-cum-politician is much greedier than a common civil servant who steals mostly for consumption. But politicians who own businesses never feel it is enough, as they do it to fill a ”bottomless-pit” of business financing needs.

For many years, vocational school (SMK) students have endured a stigma as troublemakers. They are also often associated with street brawls and other cases of juvenile delinquency; the public tends to look down on them and vocational schools in general compared to students of private or state high schools.

One lesson from The Hague is that a state should be encouraged to admit past crimes involving its leaders, policies, police and military in either war or peacetime.

A September World Bank report on Indonesia cites bureaucratic red tape, inertia, overlapping regulations, too many discretionary decisions by ministers and regional government rules that contradict Jokowi’s policies and excessive import and export administrative procedures. All these problems have cut Indonesia off from the global supply chain, consequently making it unattractive to foreign direct investment (FDI).

Without civil liberties and without a direct presidential election, what is left of our democracy?

The new units should improve the TNI as a whole in responding to external threats, a job that used to be entrusted to the three branches of the military and their respective territorial commands or fleets. Coordination among them matters as they have overlapping responsibilities, even though the line of command of each is clearly defined.

Six other major coal companies with contracts that will expire within the next three years have virtually stopped new investment over uncertainty in their contract extensions.

Questions have arisen over what justified such an aggressive approach, further changing the image of the National Police from guardians to enemies of the people. The police’s standard operating procedure in dealing with the demonstrations was unclear, at least for the hundreds arrested and their families, in the aftermath of the protests.

Not only was the checks and balances mechanism ineffective during the just-ended term of the House, the fact that thousands have taken to the streets singing “Mosi Tidak Percaya” (Vote of no confidence), reflects how the supposedly representative democracy has failed the people.

The government has not been forthcoming about what it has done to protect the public and what its troops and the police have failed to anticipate.

The President should demonstrate a much higher sense of urgency by showing stronger leadership in pushing through his reform agenda, otherwise the country will never be able to benefit from the trade and investment redirection caused by the US-China trade conflict.

“Try to live in a tent for a year, then tell me how to be strong,” a survivor told The Jakarta Post. Even though the woman, Sri Tini Haris, still has her husband and children, like others she is struggling in a “second disaster” as she desperately seeks to resume some normalcy.

The nationwide student protests, some of which descended into riots, were marked by incidents that again expose the rift between the TNI and the National Police. The incidents are only the tip of the iceberg of unresolved issues between the nation’s two armed forces.

With the Climate Pledge expected to come into force after 2020, the world has a serious problem indeed. The poorly committed countries, even if they have signed the pledge in Paris and submitted their national emissions cut strategy, may have a compliance problem.

Apparently the former militaristic characteristics of the National Police are still ingrained among officers despite a new generation having been recruited. This perhaps reflects a wider society that is still used to bullying; but the police are supposed to be the institution that has special training in keeping the peace, while they hold the state authority to use lethal force.