I am continually annoyed by the lousy state of political reporting in Indonesia’s print and broadcast media. It is hard to find serious analysis in the mainstream Indonesian or English language news, separating rumors and speculations from analysis and predictions. It makes beltway punditry in the US look like an edition of the American Political Science Review, sophisticated and considered.

Why complain about this now? Well, because of this article and several others like it. This particular one, in one of Indonesia’s oldest and most prestigious new outlets, cites my Monkey Cage preelection report as saying, among other things, that

the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), in turn, will use the Jokowi candidacy to build strength in the House of Representatives. By the large number of votes collected in the legislative election, or seats in the parliament, the PDI-P will not have to build a coalition.

*Sigh* You can bet that Jokowi’s presidency has its first scandal, or enters into its first shady deal, I will be accused of having been wrong about him and about PDI-P.