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Is VP Gibran’s complaint service initiative a panacea? – Academy

Posted on by Josh L
Is VP Gibran’s complaint service initiative a panacea? – Academy

ice President Jebran Rakabuming Raka launched the Lapor Mas Wapres (Report to the Vice President) program for the public. The complaint desk is available to citizens from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. People can also submit their complaints online, through the WhatsApp instant messaging app or the website.

Gibran’s initiative is based on his experience as mayor of Surakarta in Central Java from 2021 to 2024, during which he established a complaints desk in his office. His father, former president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, also opened a similar table when he served as governor of Jakarta from 2012 to 2014.

Gibran’s initiative caused controversy. The program, designed to send public complaints directly to the vice president’s office, promises a new approach for citizens to seek solutions. While this concept may sound promising, a closer look reveals that it creates unnecessary duplication of existing systems and potentially turns the VP into a one-size-fits-all problem solver.

Rather than simplifying government response, this initiative may simply centralize influence, marginalizing local governance structures. Is this a real step forward, or just another way for the vice president to expand his powers in an area that should remain decentralized?

One has to wonder: how many Indonesians really face problems that require the direct intervention of the vice president? By establishing this new channel, the vice president risks turning his office, designed to solve national problems, into a bureaucracy focused on local problems.

This raises doubts as to whether this is an effective use of his position or exceeding the duties of local leaders. Such a step can be regarded as a populist strategy.

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As Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser (2017) explain, populist politics is essentially a struggle between “pure people” and “corrupt elites,” where populist leaders position themselves as defenders of popular sovereignty.