Author: foggkwilliam

This post was originally from June 28, 2018. In yesterday's Indonesian regional elections, there was a major landmark for Indonesian women, but it seems to have been largely unnoticed in the press (both foreign and domestic). Khofifah Indar Parawansa, who resigned as Minister of Social Affairs in January 2018 to make her third run at the East Java governor's mansion, was the first woman to come to power as an Indonesian governor by election. As you can see, I have chosen my words rather carefully there. Khofifah will not be the first female governor in Indonesian history; that honor goes to Ratu Atut Chosiyah, who was first elected Vice-Governor in Banten in 2002, then became governor three years later when her father arranged for the governor to be taken down on corruption charges.…

This post was originally from August 6, 2018. Many readers will know about my sabbatical research a year ago, looking into the history of mass Islamic organizations based outside of Java. I was particularly focused on three groups: Nahdlatul Wathan on Lombok; Alkhairaat based in Palu; and Jamiyatul Washliyah, founded in Medan. This week, as the Indonesian presidential candidates are set to finalize their running mates for next year's national elections, I am struck that all three organizations I was studying have a man still in the race (and yes, all the candidates on all the tickets look to be men) for the vice-presidency. From Nahdlatul Wathan, Muhammad Zainul Majdi (more commonly known as TGB, short for Tuan Guru Bajang) is a grandson of the founder and current head of (one of the…

This post was originally from August 8, 2018. As everyone interested in Indonesian politics (including me) waits on pins and needles for the announcement of presidential running-mates and the determination of whether there will be a third national ticket in the 2019 elections (see my previous post on vice-presidents here), I was thinking about the history of horse-trading to build coalitions in Indonesia. For years, there was not much of this involved in the presidency. Sukarno was chosen as president by parliamentary acclamation, and he theoretically stood above parties. Although Suharto had an unambiguous affiliation to Golkar—which was technically not billed as a party but as a “non-party vehicle”—by the 1992 round of national elections, it was PPP, not Golkar, that formally put him up for president in the national parliament.…

After my last internet hosting service was bought out by another company (and in the transition, I lost a decade worth of blog posts!), I have undertaken to redesign and relaunch this academic website. Much of the content remains the same, but with a fresh face (and an entirely new back-end). Thoughts and comments on the redesign are welcome, either here or via email.