A/Prof Marcus Mietzner - the Soekarno dynasty

The Soekarno dynasty is arguably Indonesia’s first and certainly most successful political family – able to count two presidents and the country’s largest political party, PDI-P - as its legacy, so far. Soekarno himself, was the nation’s founding father and first president and his daughter, Megawati, its fifth and to date, only female president from 2001-2004. Today Megawati continues to lead the family party, which has played a significant role in Indonesia’s democratic consolidation.

However, with the matriarch, Megawati, failing twice in her attempts to re-capture the presidency, in 2014 the decision was made to put forward a ‘proxy’ nominee for the party’s presidential bid. As history tell us, their choice, Joko Widodo, proved a very good one. Now, six years later, with Jokowi in his second and final term, the issue of a successor is once more on the table, and with it questions about the ability of the Soekarno dynasty to regenerate and hold on to its power.

What are the characteristics that have seen the Soekarno dynasty survive and thrive for three generations? What are the challenges of regeneration facing the Soekarno family? Has the dynasty weakened its own position by its decision to elevate Joko Widodo to the presidency? And as members of the president’s own family seek to enter politics via the upcoming regional elections (Pilkada), is Jokowi looking to create a political dynasty of his own to rival that of the Soekarnos?

To talk about these questions and more, our guest this week is A/Prof Marcus Mietzner, College of Asia and the Pacific, ANU. He has written extensively on the Sukarno dynasty and the PDI-P, including, ‘The Sukarno dynasty in Indonesia: Between institutionalisation, ideological continuity and crises of succession’ SEAR, Volume: 24 issue: 3, page(s): 355-368.

In 2020, the Talking Indonesia podcast is co-hosted by Dr Jemma Purdey from the Australia-Indonesia Centre, Dr Dave McRae from the University of Melbourne’s Asia Institute, Dr Charlotte Setijadi from the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore and Dr Dirk Tomsa from La Trobe University.

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Image: Marcus Mietzner, November 2013