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CSIS Commentaries DMRU-097-EN

18 January 2021

Indonesia's COVID-19 Mismanagement:

A 2020 Policy Kaleidoscope
Samuel Pablo Ignasius Pareira
MA candidate in International Affairs
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), Geneva
[email protected]

COVID-19 pandemic situation in Indonesia faces the same complexities with countries such as India
and Brazil due to the developing economy and vast population. One fundamental factor that limits
the Indonesian government response in handling the pandemic is the nation's geography. Indonesia
is the largest archipelagic state globally, with 267 million people scattered over 17 thousand islands.
On the paper, a swift and strict island lockdown on Java – contributing to over 60 per cent of total
positive cases (Indonesia COVID-19 Task Force, 2020) – in the first few days of the pandemic would
be effective halt the spread of the virus. Due to the government wavering response since the first two
confirmed cases was recorded on 2 March in Jakarta (Ihsanuddin, 2020), the pandemic went out of
control. It spread to the entire 34 provinces of the archipelago, making outbreak response more
difficult. People's mobility within islands is difficult to control, due to the strong presence of the
informal sector within the Indonesian economy, which I will elaborate on in the following section.

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Many Indonesians believe the coronavirus must have been entered Indonesia months earlier,
considering the proximity of travellers' movement from China and how the government did not
suspend any flights coming from there. President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) administration has ignored
warnings from scientists since the beginning, with his special task force dominated by military figures,
and calls made by several physicians and epidemiologists for a partial lockdown and aggressive
polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing largely ignored (Jakarta Post, 2020). He even admitted that the
government conceal some information of early COVID-19 confirmed cases, such as their travel
history " to avoid mass hysteria amid the people," despite public pressure (Ihsanuddin, 2020). The
then-Minister of Health Terawan Putranto also constantly undermining the severity of the disease,
rebuffing talk about government inability to detect early cases, blaming people for panic buying of
surgical masks, and citing that the disease has the self-cure ability and it had not reached Indonesia
due to the power of prayer (Ihsanuddin, 2020).
Economy vs health conundrum?
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the government response has been biased toward resolving the
economic crisis rather than the health crisis, and this is understandable. The Indonesian economy's
backbone is mostly informal sector, which accounts for more than 60% of the workforce (ILO, 2020).
As of August 2019, there were 70.49 million informal workers in Indonesia (Susanty & Makur, 2020).
These workers – from ojek (motorcycle taxi) driver to small and medium businesses (SMEs) staff –
are not protected from non-payment of wages, prone to retrenchment without notice or
compensation, and usually do not have a good social safety net and social benefits, e.g., pensions, sick
pay, and health insurance (ILO, 2020). These workers cannot be forced to work from home, whose
reliance on daily earnings makes them vulnerable. Hence, imposing a large-scale lockdown without
efficient social aid cash transfer would send these people and their family straight into poverty, or even
worse, death.
From these informal sectors, the tourism industry is the hardest-hit, with getaway paradise such as
Bali was forced to close its borders from foreign tourists – its primary source of income – for more
than nine months. Indonesian Hotel and Restaurant Association (PHRI) stated that tourism sector
losses exceed US$ 9.5 billion at the beginning of November. The pandemic has led to massive layoffs,
with around 550,000 hotel employees or 78.5% of the industry's total registered workers already
furloughed or laid off. According to the Indonesian Bureau of Statistics, the number of foreign tourist
arrivals slumped 70.57% year-on-year between January and September to 3.56 million visitors (Strait
Times, 2020).
At the end of March, the Indonesian government announced a fiscal package to respond to the
pandemic with an additional state budget of IDR 405 trillion (US$ 20.3 billion) aimed to stimulate the
economy and employment. A relatively small chunk of US$ 3.8 billion is allocated to the health sector,
for the purchase of medical equipment and supplies, as well as protection of and incentives for medical
workers. US$ 5 billion was allocated for tax incentives, US$ 7.5 billion for debit/credit restructuring
and financing for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and US$ 5.5 billion allocated for social
protection with a focus to monthly cash transfer and social aid packages for poor people (ILO, 2020).
The government also widen the state budget deficit limit from the current legal limit 3% of GDP for
the next three years until 2022. This is the first time in history, the government has been doing so, and
the first time since the Asian Financial Crisis 1998, it will exceed 3% (Gorbiano and Akhlas, 2020).
With the response that was weighing in more to the economic side since the very beginning, it came
as no surprise that the government has failed to bring the pandemic under control. Until 31 December

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2020, 743,198 positive cases have been recorded across the archipelago out of around 4.91 million
people tested, with 22,138 death (Indonesia COVID-19 Task Force, 2020), the worst in Southeast
Asia and fourth-worst in Asia (Worldometer, 2020). Since the beginning of the pandemic, Indonesia's
positivity rate until the end of 2020 is 15.13%, three times the WHO standard of 5%. It shows almost
3% case fatality rate (CFR), above the global average of 2.32%. What makes these figures more
concerning is that the nation's weekly testing rate is yet to reach a WHO standard of 1 test per 1,000
population. With its population, Indonesia supposed to have around 267,000 people tested every
week. Only in the first week of December, the government managed to test 257,254 people, or 96.35%
of the WHO weekly target (Jakarta Post, 2020).
Continuous policy mismanagement by the government
I want to highlight several policy mismanagements by the government which affect the pandemic
response and create growing discontent and deficit of trust among the people, questioning
government's ability to curb the ongoing health and economic crisis. I choose four policies regarding
their lasting impact, both to the effort in controlling the viral outbreak and the aftermath of public
outcry & growing political opposition towards President Jokowi's government.

1. On 15 May, under pressure to reopen Indonesia's economy to stimulate growth, reduce

unemployment and prevent a further escalation of poverty, President Jokowi announced
"New Normal" policy, telling people to "live side to side and make peace with COVID-19"
and continue the economic activity, amid surging cases. Consequently, just a month later,
Indonesia overtook Singapore as Southeast Asia's worst-hit nation when its cases surpassed
41,000. Health experts and academics alike argued that the talk of a new normal creates a false
sense of security and encourages people to think Indonesia has the pandemic under control,
amid pandemic curve showing no sign of decline since the first case (Sutarsa et al., 2020).
2. On 21 September, the parliament and government insisted on holding regional elections in 9
provinces and 261 regencies/cities as planned on 9 December (CNN Indonesia, 2020). The
government insistence brought public scrutiny and strong opposition from both medical
experts and political opponents, not only because the severe threat of further outbreak from
political campaign and voting day's crowd, but also because it was seen as an effort to
strengthen political nepotism of the ruling government – some of the mayoral candidates are
president's son and vice president's daughter (Kamil, 2020) – amid a worsening health crisis.
Later, clusters of COVID-19 outbreak were shown spreading after the elections, with
epidemiologists citing weak contact tracing as the leading cause (BBC News Indonesia, 2020).
3. On 2 December, Minister of Social Affairs Juliari Batubara arrested and named as a suspect
by the Indonesian Corruption Eradication Commission (Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi/KPK).
He was accused of taking US$ 1.2 million bribes over the procurement of goods worth US$
420 million for COVID-19 social aid packages (Al Jazeera, 2020). This act of dire corruption
on social assistance policy for the poor amid the worsening pandemic has dragged down public
trust from an already critical point to a new low. Some public members even call for Batubara
to be sentenced to death (Prodjo, 2020). Indonesian Law No. 31/1999 on corruption stipulates
that an act of corruption under "certain circumstances" – including repeat offenders and
corruption committed during times of national emergency/disaster and economic/monetary
crisis – is punishable by capital punishment.

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 4. On 10 December, then Minister Putranto announced in a parliamentary hearing that at least
75 million Indonesian will need to pay for COVID-19 vaccine, without citing the reason (CNN
Indonesia, 2020). After serious public outcry, President Jokowi announced a week later that
the vaccine would be free for all, quoting that his government has "taken into account public
opinion and recalculated state fiscal budget" (BPMI Setpres, 2020). This repeated
inconsistency of statement from public officials and government's "testing the water"
behaviour regarding COVID-19 response since the beginning shows how the Indonesian
government is uncoordinated and ill-prepared in facing both health and economic crisis, thus
endanger both public health and the nation's economy.
COVID-19 as the beginning of a political collapse in Indonesia?
In his work, Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies introduced several approaches in
understanding systemic collapse, with one of them being conflict or mismanagement. Antagonism and
conflicting goals between social classes are the common underlying theme of Tainter's conflict
approach. Collapse can result from such conflicts through withdrawal of support and outright revolt
by peasant populations and elite self-serving and political mismanagement (Tainter, 1988).
Concerning the Indonesian economy and health system, it is too early to conclude that the current
COVID-19 crisis has brought the entire system into collapse. Indonesian people have faced hundreds
of natural disasters every year throughout the nation's history, be it an earthquake or volcanic eruption,
due to its unique geographical location at the centre of Pacific Ring of Fire. This condition contributes
to a vast social capital and strong social fabric within the people.
Thanks to the resilience of the Indonesian people, the civil society has risen to the occasion throughout
the pandemic – shown for example by crowdfunding campaigns in helping informal workers, thriving
start-up digital sectors of local e-commerce, education, health, and ride-hailing firms (Preuss, 2020),
and the creation of KawalCOVID19.id, an open-source COVID-19 data platforms initiative by several
Indonesian epidemiologists and health experts to help shed light on data discrepancy between the
central dan provincial governments. I argue that these various initiatives from, by, and for the people
have been supplementing and even substituting government role in the area where government
responses fall short.
Nevertheless, using Tainter's analytical framework, it is evident that the social aid corruption case
shows the Indonesian elite self-serving tendency in handling COVID-19 crisis, deliberate government
inconsistency in trying to limit mobility yet insisting on holding regional elections, and other political
mismanagements. This could spark further conflicts between the elites and the public through the
withdrawal of public support, growing discontent and collective grief. Henceforth, these could raise
the opportunity of political collapse throughout the archipelago, if not managed carefully.
At the end of the year, after ten months of COVID-19 pandemic that infected almost 900 thousand
people and took almost 26 thousand of Indonesian lives (Indonesia COVID-19 Task Force, 2020),
President Jokowi reshuffled his cabinet and changed Health Minister Putranto to Budi Gunadi Sadikin,
a former banker and CEO of Bank Mandiri who previously acted as Deputy-Minister of State-Owned
Enterprises (SOEs). His appointment is welcomed by medical communities, mainly due to his strong
managerial skills, which will be valuable to deal with disbursement of health budgets and distribution
of healthcare resources. He chairs the National Economic Recovery Task Force and has played a vital
role in the country's effort to secure vaccines (Yulisman & Soeriaatmadja, 2020). Indonesia has secured
a total of nearly 330 million doses of vaccine from Sinovac, AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech
(Widianto, 2021). It remains to be seen if this change of health minister will bring stability and certainty
on the government response in the remaining year.

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