For the first time in its history, on October 20th Indonesia will witness the transfer of power from one popularly elected president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, to another, Joko Widodo. Until now, high-level politics has been dominated by a tiny group of people with sometimes interlinked interests-if shifting allegiances. Mr Joko is the first to come from well outside that circle. The incoming president (above, centre), who is widely known as Jokowi, is the son of a timber collector and was raised in a riv-erbank shack in the mid-sized Javanese city of Solo. In private or out visiting voters, he is engaging, even charismatic. In set-piece speeches, he is halting, and he hates pomp. Jokowi was elected as a new sort of leader for Indonesia: young(ish), pragmatic, approachable and to all appearances untainted by corruption. Propelled by cohorts of younger, technologically sophisticated voters, he rose to prominence not through party ranks but on a record of constituent service and good governance. As mayor of Solo and then governor of Jakarta, he dealt with the quotidian issues of traffic, flooding and sanitation-the sorts of issues that people care about, though politicians rarely deign to spend time on them.
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