The Deepening of Jokowi’s Populist Leadership Amidst COVID-19 Pandemic: Exploring its Effect to Economy and Global Partnership

Abstract

The rise of populist leaders amidst the pandemic has become the fundamental debate of political scholars nowadays. This article described the populist leadership pattern of Jokowi in times of the outbreak COVID-19 pandemic and its implication toward the economy and global partnership. The qualitative method and descriptive analysis approach have been used in this article. Through library research in several resources, this article explained the casual relationship of Jokowi’s populist leadership amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and its implication toward the economy and global partnership. The result of this research has shown that Jokowi’s populist leader in the form of bias optimism, anti-science, and leadership ambiguity has led Indonesia into the worsening of pandemic cases among Southeast Asia countries. The incapability of the Indonesian government to tackle the increased number of COVID-19 cases has been proven by the negative economic growth in the scope of regional and global partnerships. Furthermore, this article concludes that Jokowi’s populist leadership has failed to maintain the economy and global partnership.