Economist Talks of Jokowi's Legacies That May Burden Next President
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30 October 2023 23:04 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - An economist and Director of the Institute for Demographic and Poverty Studies (IDEAS) Yusuf Wibisono disclosed a number of legacies of President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo that will burden the next president.
Three pairs of presidential and vice presidential candidates have registered for the 2024 presidential election. They are Anies Baswedan – Muhaimin Iskandar, Ganjar Pranowo – Mahfud MD, and Prabowo Subianto – Gibran Rakabuming Raka.
Yusuf revealed that one of the legacy programs is the Nusantara State Capital or IKN project, which he considered the most problematic legacy.
“It will burden whoever is elected as the next president,” Yusuf told Tempo on Monday, October 30.
Tempo found that only the pair of Anies Baswedan and Muhaimin Iskandar did not mention the IKN development project in their vision and mission document, unlike the other two pairs who are determined to resume the giant project.
Since it is already underway, an economics professor at the Bogor Agricultural Institute, Didin S. Damanhuri, suggested that the future president-elect optimize the IKN to be only the capital of the government to prevent the dozens of trillion rupiah project from being wasted. “It can be like Putrajaya of Malaysia or Camp David of the United States, which is a region for the president and state guests to meet,” Didin said, expecting that such a solution would not disrupt fiscal sustainability.
Jokowi's other legacies that could burden his successor are the State Debt which reached Rp6,310 trillion as of August 2023 and various infrastructure problems such as the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed train or Whoosh, the Trans Sumatra toll road, the corruption case in the construction of the MBZ toll road, and the Kertajati Airport.
Yusuf estimated that the Whoosh high-speed train would take 80 years to be profitable.
RADEN PUTRI | TIM TEMPO
Editor's Choice: IKN, Jokowi's Most Problematic Inheritance, Expert Says
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