Jakarta Globe – AFP, Nov 04, 2014
Jakarta. With a wife who eschews designer outfits and a daughter happy to queue at public health clinics, Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s family are setting a modest example in a region where leaders’ relatives are better known for greed and corruption.
Jakarta. With a wife who eschews designer outfits and a daughter happy to queue at public health clinics, Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s family are setting a modest example in a region where leaders’ relatives are better known for greed and corruption.
Southeast
Asia’s ruling families have not generally espoused austerity — from the
controversial children of late Indonesian dictator Suharto to the wife of
Malaysia’s premier, who is criticized as a spendthrift, and the excesses of
Brunei’s royals.
In
contrast, the wife, daughter and two sons of Widodo, known as Jokowi, appear
humble and down to earth, more representative of the country’s rapidly emerging
middle class than an aloof elite.
“Even now
Jokowi has been elected president, they still want to live like other ordinary
people,” Anggit Noegroho, a friend of Widodo’s who helped him during numerous
political campaigns and has known the family for a decade, told Agence
France-Presse.
They
present the same image as 53-year-old Widodo himself, Indonesia’s first
president from outside the political and military elites, who rose from a
modest background and has pledged clean governance in one of the world’s most
corrupt countries.
However observers
caution that it could be tough going for a family unused to intense public
scrutiny — and point out it is not hard for them to look good, given what went
before.
The
children of Widodo’s predecessor, ex-general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono,
sometimes courted controversy, with one of his sons having to fend off
accusations of corruption, but it was the offspring of Suharto who provoke the
most anger in Indonesia.
His six
children allegedly amassed fortunes by enjoying privileged access to lucrative
business deals during his three-decade rule, which was marked by massive
corruption. He was toppled in 1998 by the Asian financial crisis.
The most
controversial is youngest son Hutomo Mandala Putra, popularly known as Tommy.
A playboy
with a taste for flashy cars, he served four years of a 15-year prison term for
hiring hitmen to murder a judge who had sentenced him to jail for corruption.
He was released in 2006.
Rejects
fancy handbags
When it
comes to Widodo’s family, his wife Iriana, 51, has forgone the designer clothes
and fancy handbags beloved of many first ladies, normally opting for plain
shirts and trousers.
His eldest
son has set up a catering business in the family’s hometown of Solo, on Java,
and drives a Mazda hatchback.
While his
family spent several days in Jakarta before Widodo’s Oct. 20 inauguration, the
27-year-old did not leave until the day before due to his heavy workload.
“I will be
able to leave the city only once my catering jobs are done,” he told the
Jakarta Post newspaper.
When
Widodo’s daughter, Kahiyang Ayu, injured her hand, the 23-year-old reportedly
insisted on being taken to a community health centre instead of an expensive
private clinic and waited to be seen by a doctor.
A blog by
Widodo’s youngest son, 17-year-old Kaesang Pangarep, has shone a light on the
first family’s private life, with tales of his father playing practical jokes
and worries about what to wear to school adding to the sense they are just
normal, middle-class folk.
The family
is not poor — Widodo used to be a successful businessman — and one area where
they have splashed out is the children’s education. The two sons both attended
high school in Singapore, while the eldest did business courses in the
city-state and Australia.
Even in
wealthy Singapore, however, the youngest son said that his parents did not
spoil him.
“I very
rarely take the MRT (subway) because it is more expensive than a bus ride,” he
wrote on his blog during his time in the city-state, adding that his mother had
refused to increase his meager pocket money allowance.
He said
that his mother told him: “Your pocket money shouldn’t be a lot, so that you
know the misery of living in another country.”
While they
have mostly been praised by the public and media, it is still early days for
the family and there are already signs that everything might not run smoothly.
The eldest
son faced criticism recently for responding angrily to reporters’ questions
about why he did not appear with his father during the presidential campaign.
“This man
is too sensitive. He is not like his father,” one Twitter user commented.
Agence France-Presse
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