Like in previous years, economic issues dominated the state-of-the-nation address delivered by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo before members of the House of Representatives (DPR) and the Regional Representatives Council (DPD).
By
Yohan Wahyu
·5 minutes read
Like in previous years, economic issues dominated the state-of-the-nation address delivered by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo before members of the House of Representatives (DPR) and the Regional Representatives Council (DPD).
President Jokowi delivered his speech in the celebration of Indonesia\'s 73rd anniversary in the joint plenary session of House and DPD members on Thursday (16/8/2018) for 42 minutes and 12 seconds.
Of the 70 paragraphs comprising his speech, 15 paragraphs (21.2 percent) discussed economic and social welfare issues. The focus of the speech was not separated from the recent public scrutiny of the government’s performance in these two fields.
The President began to touch on economic issues in the 19th paragraph of the speech after emphasizing issues related to the pride of the nation with the potential and success achieved in the past year.
Earlier, at the beginning of the speech, the President mentioned political and legal issues. However, even in this section, issues related to the economy were also discussed, such as in the achievement of the government in taking over the Mahakam oil and gas block, the Sanga-Sanga oil and gas block and the Rokan oil and gas block. The issue of controlling the majority of Freeport shares was also mentioned.
The government\'s attention to the nation’s economic issues that was covered in the speech was analyzed by Kompas’ Research and Development (Litbang Kompas) division. The analysis is based on the President’s nine key development programs, known as the Nawacita concept, which is the priority program of the Joko Widodo-Jusuf Kalla.
Nawacita
The state-of-the-nation address mostly highlighted the sixth agenda in the Nawacita, which is related to the government\'s efforts to increase people\'s productivity and competitiveness in the international market. From the description of Nawacita\'s sixth point, Litbang Kompas recorded a number of dictions in the speech, such as economics, competitiveness, productivity, international markets, the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), export, import, rupiah exchange rate, foreign labor, investment and infrastructure.
The diction contained in the sixth point of Nawacita was also found in the President’s state of the nation address. Based on the result of Litbang Kompas’ analysis, 35.9 percent of the President\'s speeches discussed more about the economy.
Many of the dictions in the text of the speech represented the sixth priority program in the Nawacita, such as development, infrastructure, economy, economic growth and investment.
The finding is relevant to the spirit of the economic issues presented by the President in his speech, namely to strengthen macroeconomic stability and improve the quality of growth, ensuring the achievement of the economic justice, preparing long-term sustainable economic development and carrying out structural reforms to improve economic competitiveness.
After the sixth point of the Nawacita, the fifth point in Nawacita was second in terms of the number of issues mentioned by the President in his speech. The fifth point concerns efforts to improve the quality of life of the Indonesian people.
From the results of the analysis, 13.7 percent of the content of the President\'s speech is related to the fifth point of the Nawacita. The dictions found in this category include land certificates, welfare, family, poverty and social justice. The dominance of economic issues and welfare is not new in President Jokowi\'s state-of-the-nation speech.
Most messages from the President’s 2015 state-of-the-nation speech were also related to the sixth and fifth points of the Nawacita concept. At that time, subsidies and infrastructure were the two most used dictions in the President\'s 2015 speech. The same thing occurred in the 2016 state-of-the-nation speech. At that time, 30.7 percent of the President\'s speech were related to the sixth point of the Nawacita.
The two dominant dictions in this category were development and infrastructure. In the 2016 speech, the President mentioned issues related to the slowdown of the global economy and its impacts on the national economy. However, in the 2017 speech, the global economic conditions were not directly discussed by the President even though economic issues remained a major concern.
The results of the analysis showed that 17.6 percent of the speech was related to economic matters (sixth point the Nawacita). This issue was ranked second after the first point of the Nawacita, which emphasized the presence of the state to protect the people and to provide a sense of security to all citizens.
Political year
From the results of the analysis of the contents, economic issues dominated all of the state-of-the-nation speeches from 2015 to 2018. However, this year\'s speech was delivered when the President also is also as a presidential candidate for the 2019 election. Not surprisingly, the state-of-the-nation speech delivered in the political year ahead of next year\'s elections received mixed responses.
One of the criticisms was conveyed by the chairman of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) Zulkifli Hasan in his speech about the state policy of foreign debts.
The criticism of Zulkifli, who is also the chairman of the National Mandate Party (PAN) cannot be separated from economic issues that have become the government’s main homework. Especially when referring to the Litbang Kompas’ periodic survey related to the performance of the Jokowi-Kalla government, public satisfaction toward the government\'s performance in the economic field was lowest compared to other fields, such as politics and security, law and social welfare.
The dominance of economic issues and the achievement of the government in the field, which was delivered in the President\'s speech, certainly signals that the economic condition indeed remains the main challenge for the government now and in the future.