My fundamental opposition to Jokowi's presidential candidacy involves public policy differences. None of us can look into Jokowi's heart or read his soul. The best evidence we have to judge by is first, the record of what Jokowi has done, and second, what he has said about what he has done. While Jokowi's one and a half years in Jakarta and another six and a half years in Solo have given him remarkably little time on the national political stage, we still have information from his failures in Jakarta and Solo due to his lack of focus on the primary objective. Indonesia deserve a president who will take care of all citizens and stay focused on the long-term strength of our state. In short, Jokowi is an empty suit, "long on rhetoric and short on established political deeds."

I argue that a Jokowi presidency would lead us into a failed state because of Jokowi's radical marxist politics seeking to expand communism in Indonesia, driven by the cult of personality with a touch of the divine he has intentionally manufactured, would be an abomination in that the result of the policies would be to lead the Republic of Indonesia in a costly and self-destructive direction, both at home and abroad. After a Jokowi's presidency, we would be militarily weaken and economically diminished nation. Instead of being more united, our internal conflicts could well become more sharpened and more abrasive from five years of Jokowi leadership. I opine that Jokowi's presidency would represent nothing more than a repeat of the failed extremist politics that have characterized and plagues Indonesian politics in the 1960s.

Jokowi has so doggedly positioned himself as a closeted marxist on the extreme left that it is doubtful he can credibly move to the political center without alienating his Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle/PDIP supporters on that extreme left as well as his youthful base. In contrast to Prabowo Subianto, Joko Widodo has not been vetted, not even by the PDIP. Two years ago he is largely an unknown to all but a small handful of dogged political profesionals and a concentrated core of political junkies who inhabit the social medias and the internet.

When people truly hear to the way he talk, the more they're going to find this tone of arrogance and elitism come through. Jokowi is an elitist, out-of-touch with middle-class and he had never lived in an urban ghetto as opposed to his carefully crafted image designed to make him appear as a unifier, a politician who had trancended politics, a larger soul capable of embracing the poor and the lowly more effectively than had any person on the Indonesian political scene since at least Soeharto. If Jokowi will lie about his parents, what won't he lie about? Perhaps Jokowi is lying about, or covering up, the full extent of his relationship with Abu Bakar Ba'asyir? How about CSIS and the cliques of Benny Moerdani? Is Jokowi lying there, too?

The fascinating part of these lies is Jokowi's determination to connect himself with Soeharto and the satria piningit myth of the later presidency. Why Jokowi would want to connect himself with Soeharto is clear, Soeharto along with Soekarno, occupies a central position in the pantheon of revered Indonesian presidents. All Indonesian presidential contenders want themselves to be seen as the "next Soekarno" or the "next Soeharto," the problem is that the stories he told about his connection to Soeharto by way of borrowing to the level of plagiarizing of Soeharto's "anak desa" origins to his rises as the president of Indonesia, which Jokowi then overlays on circumstances in his, totally imagined, in order to express a rage he wants to own due to spending his formative year living below the poverty line.

But he did not grow up in an urban ghetto in an impoverished family, and he ended up the "Universitas Gajah Mada"-educated son of a Solo-based furniture mogul, thus the story of Jokowi are fabrications, lies without no basis in fact or reality and was made up completely out of thin air. This was the heart of Tempo's charge against Jokowi, that the record of Jokowi's time at high school as an entitled brats who likes showing off his fancy motorcycles is problematic for a candidate who likes to present himself as a champion of the poor, the minorities, and the disadvantaged among us.

Jokowi's campaign seems to be predicated on the assumption that he has somehow transcended 'power politics' that he is in fact the anti-politician by way of crafting lofty phrases around which to build Jokowi's personality and image campaigns. But I have the hunch when you peel off the hope-saturated facade and get down to the hard business of running Indonesia, you will find Jokowi is a politician, much like any other. In short, his campaigns to create the "Jokowi is the messiah/mahdi/satria piningit" phenomenon was a dose of political hagiography at it most nauseating.

As the PDIP's presidential nominee, Jokowi may find that his background with Luhut Pandjaitan, the golden boy of Benny Moerdani and other assorted retired army generals with poor human rights records forms a deep mine of scandals to be examined, reexamined, and investigated anew. Suddenly, a score of reporters would demand answer to whether Jokowi had granted any political favors in exchange for campaign contributions leading to him losing composure when he realizes that suddenly everybody who's ever touched his life is subject to colonoscopy on the front page of the newspaper; by then instead of making psychotic rant of "shameful offensive fearmongering" for revealing his hidden roots, Jokowi should had realized that this level of intense scrutiny is a price paid by those running for president. But what Jokowi cannot erase is his record since 2008: he has overlooked Luhut's questionable human rights records to take money not just to finance his campaigns but to enter into a shabby business venture with Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan.