Time for Tito

TWO factors drove Indonesians to elect Joko Widodo, universally known as Jokowi, president in 2014. The first was his reputation for clean governance, earned as mayor of the midsized Javanese city of Solo and then as governor of Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital. The second was his personal background: a former furniture-seller, he is Indonesia’s first president to come from outside the political and military elite, which has long dominated Indonesia’s narrow politics. Voters wanted him to change the system.

Many of his supporters were therefore angered when, in January 2015, he nominated Budi Gunawan to head the national police force. The appointment was widely seen as a sop to Megawati Sukarnoputri, a former president who heads Jokowi’s party, the PDI-P. Just days after the appointment was announced, Indonesia’s anti-corruption commission declared that Mr Budi was suspected of corruption. After weeks of protests Jokowi dropped Mr Budi and appointed the uncontroversial Badrodin Haiti in his place.

Mr Haiti will reach the mandatory retirement age of 58 in July. To replace him Jokowi surprised everyone by choosing Tito Karnavian, a respected officer who runs the country’s counter-terrorism agency. Often candidates are appointed based on seniority, but at just 51 Mr Karnavian will be younger than many of his subordinates. Few have better credentials. As a former commander of Densus 88, Indonesia’s American-trained anti-terrorism force, Mr Karnavian battled Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional jihadist outfit, and killed or captured some of South-East Asia’s most wanted militants. He is articulate and intelligent, and seems committed to cleaning up the police force, one of Indonesia’s most notoriously corrupt institutions.

As important as what Mr Karnavian may do in the top job is what his appointment says about Jokowi. Presumably the PDI-P wanted Jokowi to renominate Mr Budi, who remains close to Ms Megawati. But Jokowi stood firm, and the party’s parliamentarians appear likely, perhaps with some grumbling and reluctance, to support the politically independent Mr Karnavian. Although nobody gets promoted through the police ranks without patrons, Evan Laksmana of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank in Jakarta, says that Mr Karnavian has not aligned himself with any one political group or party.

Jokowi’s independence appealed to voters, but it hobbled him in a party-reliant political system. At times he seemed overawed in office; he deferred too much to Ms Megawati, and struggled to keep his fractious cabinet from squabbling and setting out often divergent policies. Lately, though, Jokowi’s leadership has been more assured. His ministers have been less inclined to snipe at each other.

Partly this is because he has silenced or removed some of the more disruptive ministers. But it also reflects external political shifts that have made Jokowi less reliant on Ms Megawati and the PDI-P. Golkar, parliament’s second-largest party, quit the opposition coalition and threw its support behind Jokowi after settling a long-running leadership dispute in May. Perhaps Golkar wants the president to switch parties before 2019; perhaps it just wants cabinet seats. Whatever the reason, Ms Megawati now matters less—she has long treated her protégé less as the president than as a recalcitrant backbencher—and Jokowi now has more room to govern on his own terms.