President Jokowi’s Securitization in Countering Terrorism

Abstract

Terrorist actions that occurred in Indonesia have caused many people to die and be injured and infrastructure was destroyed. The purpose of this study is to analyze President Jokowi’s policies in dealing with terrorism in Indonesia. This article applies the securitization approach. The securitizing movement allows actors to violate normal political rules and take extraordinary actions in dealing with threats to the object of reference encountered in the securitization process. Terrorism is an existential threat to a state that has been securitized by the Indonesian government. Securitization is a process where an issue that was initially considered as an ordinary political issue is raised to become a security issue that requires special handling. This article focuses on Jokowi’s policy, which analyzes Jokowi’s rhetoric by urging lawmakers to speed up the revision of anti-terrorism law no.15/2003 for being inadequate to face contemporary challenges. This securitization process is a form of President Jokowi’s awareness that terrorism is a threat. The novelty in this research is Jokowi’s policy analysis in combat terrorism based on securitization theory.