Apparently, even President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo knows that the best place to shop for cheap electronics in Jakarta is Mangga Dua.
Jokowi first rose to popularity as the Mayor of Solo, and then as Governor of Jakarta, in large part because he was seen as a man of the people. He was famous for going on “blusukan”, impromptu visits to places like local markets and government offices so that he could interact directly with his citizens and subordinates.
Since becoming president of Indonesia, however, Jokowi has mostly had to stop going on blusukan. This is of course largely a matter of practicality – it would seem impossible for the leader of the country to make a truly impromptu visit to most locations due to security concerns.
However, a set of photos that went recently went viral seems to show that President Jokowi is still capable of making a low key stop to a local store without a huge entourage of security personnel and media spectacle.
The photos were posted on Facebook by a user named Tjan Andry on Saturday and were supposedly taken on the same day at an electronics store Harco, located in Mangga Dua. According to Tjan, President Jokowi was not accompanied by any tight security while he was shopping.
The State Palace confirmed that the pictures were genuine and that the president was there shopping with his son Kaesang, who you can see in the pictures, as well as his wife Iriana, who somehow managed to avoid the camera.
“It was a family event. The President was with his wife and third son,” Bey Machmudin, spokesperson for the presidential secretariat, told Kompas yesterday.
There are no obvious bodyguards in the pictures, but it is possible that they were in plain clothes or standing outside the photo frames.
It’s been far too long since we’ve seen President Jokowi in this sort of situation and it makes it easy to remember what his initial appeal to voters was. In the year and a half since he has taken office, it seems like he has become more and more distant as he tries to sidestep controversy and the political scandals that plagued his first year.
We hope that, despite all the power he now wields and the challenges he is facing, Jokowi can once again prove he is truly a man of the people and remind so many of us why we supported him in the first place.
