Indonesian President-elect Joko Widodo sits composed on his last afternoon in the Jakarta governor's office as the noise of angry ranting drifts in from the street outside.
The Islamic Defenders Front, Indonesia's nastiest religious-zealots-cum-street-gang, are hurling rocks and racist abuse because deputy governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, a Christian and ethnic Chinese man, is within hours of assuming the governorship, the first time for a Chinese-Indonesian.
Mr Joko, 53, might be a Muslim from the heartland of Central Java, but his election as Indonesian president is no less revolutionary.
The man known as Jokowi grew up in a riverbank humpy and made his mark as a furniture manufacturer, then as a regional mayor in Solo. He's self-effacing to a fault, lays claim to no special abilities or qualifications, was never a military general, loves heavy metal music and is widely regarded by ordinary Indonesians as an orang kecil, literally a small person – "one of us".
It's made him insanely popular, particularly in the villages where the majority of Indonesians still live.
The Jakarta political elite, however – cliquey, wealthy and tied together by strong bonds of patronage – hate it. Led by failed presidential aspirants Prabowo Subianto and Aburizal Bakrie, they are throwing rocks at him not in the street, but in parliament, where they control a 63 per cent majority and have passed a flurry of laws designed to thwart him.
Jokowi himself, speaking in halting English, is as unperturbed by what pundits call the elite assault on democracy as by the distant cries of the rabble outside.
"In my experience when working in Solo, I had only 40 per cent [parliamentary support]. Here in Jakarta I have only 11 per cent. Until now I don't have a problem with the council," he says with his trademark grin.
In person, the next president is immediately likeable. He speaks in an unpolished baritone and has a wide smile and an infectious chuckle. An Indonesian newspaper editor complained during the election campaign that his reporters, male and female, kept coming back to the office having fallen in love with the candidate on their first encounter.
When he met roadblocks as governor, Jokowi says, he took his case direct to the people – in some cases posting Youtube videos of himself dressing down officials. Popular support then forced the parliament into line.
In conversation with Joko Widodo, the subject of "the people" comes up constantly. Democracy, in his mind, should be a constant process of ordinary Indonesians keeping their representatives honest. To harness people power more permanently, he wants to become Indonesia's first social media president.
"Now is the horizontal era [of politics]," he says.
"Social media is very important now when we want to send our messages. So we started to get together with our volunteers."
The idea of government-by-volunteer was inspired by his experience of winning support and subsequent activism from Indonesia's net-obsessed young.
"We have the social media group, we have farmers policies, we have fishermen's groups, they go door to door, and they inform [people] about Jokowi," he says.
In the presidential campaign, his own party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), led by Megawati Sukarnoputri, badly dropped the ball, offering limp endorsement and little funding or strategy nous.
Added to his own rampant disorganisation and lacklustre oratory, it nearly lost Jokowi the election. He squandered a 20-plus per cent poll lead to the energetic and professional tilt of former army strongman Prabowo.
It was only in the final week or two that the volunteers, known as relawan, came to the rescue, providing mass support and some memorable campaign images.
Then, as the vote was being counted and Prabowo challenged the election's legitimacy with a series of bogus claims, Joko called on ordinary people to "guard" the vote. Volunteer netizens responded in droves, making it much more difficult to corrupt.
Jokowi has kept tight links with the relawan since. He makes time for them regularly and after Monday's inauguration, hopes to escape the formalities for long enough to attend a heavy metal concert (guest stars Slank) that the volunteers are organising in his honour.
Then he wants them to continue their work for him in government.
"I will ask them to control our program, to control our project after we start," he says.
It's a typical ground-up approach from a man who is determined not to take on the trappings of office. President-elect Jokowi still eats in local street cafes, wears his signature white shirt (untucked), flies economy class and clearly relishes being buffetted by the masses at public appearances. He drives the presidential security detail crazy.
Ground-up also describes his approach to policy.
"He's not a high-concept individual," warns one of his minders before our interview. "He's not an orator, he's a storyteller. That's why he likes blusukan", his patented political tactic of making surprise visits to the field.
Ask high-concept questions about foreign policy or international relations: sovereignty, asylum boats and South China Sea diplomacy, and he consults his notes or looks to adviser Rizal Sukma, whose knowledge on these matters is widely respected.
He admits freely that, on these matters he'll rely on the ministers he'll appoint, likely in the week or two after the inauguration. His job, as he sees it, is to "manage our ministers".
But he is not unaware of the world, including Australia. He has visited as a tourist and is keen for tourism to expand. His son was a student at the University of Technology in Sydney and, as a businessman, he exported goods there.
"I sent a lot of my furniture to Australia for more than 15 years. Many of my Australian buyers came to my city and chose products … flooring and furniture and outdoor furniture … I sent many containers," he says.
Mostly, in these very early days, he views international relations as a businessman might. Ask what might ease the bilateral business relationship, and he talks not about tackling "economic nationalism" (which he broadly favours) but about licensing, logistics, power supply and fuel subsidies.
Jokowi's singular focus on the practical is the inverse of the world view of predecessor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, whose grand gestures and international glad-handing left little room for actual management.
And it's Indonesia's long neglect of the practical that makes life so tough for so many: the right to clean drinking water and to get goods to market; to have your child's teacher turn up to school and stay the day, or to have an interaction with a government official that does not involve a threat or a bribe.
Government inadequacy at every level, particularly in health and education, blights a country that by now should be doing much better. Ask about what he sees as Indonesia's key challenges, and Joko Widodo has no need for notes.
"The gap between the haves and the have-nots is the one. Income inequality is my challenge," he replies.
"I will deliver by the end of this month our Indonesian smart card to the students from poor families, and this month also I will send Indonesian health cards to the people from poor families."
The cards entitle poor people to free health treatment which, at the moment, they cannot afford. In Jokowi's world view, the demands of the people will drive change through the system. Raise their expectations and they will force government to rise to the challenge.
It's difficult to know if Jokowi thinks of it in this way, but if his bottom-up program succeeds, the flow-through of an Indonesia that works better are clear internationally. Richer, healthier, better educated Indonesians mean a bigger market for Australian goods and services (including tertiary education), more places outside Bali for Australians to easily visit, and more ballast in business-to-business and people-to-people links.
It would improve bilateral relations more surely than a generation of summit-hopping politicians could hope for.
Both countries need this. Fourteen years into the Asian Century, two-way trade with our enormous neighbour is a measly $15 billion.
It would also create a more stable and self-confident Indonesia and a more united regional voice against common threats such as terrorism, dangerous asylum seeker voyagers, or territorial provocations from China.
If it fails, of course, the sky-high expectations Joko has raised could come crashing down on his head.
One thing that might stop him is the inability to get legislation through parliament, something that so far, his enemies appear to be highly motivated to do. The Prabowo team is now promising to be a "constructive" opposition, but while Prabowo on Friday congratulated his erstwhile rival for the first time and called him "a patriot", their track record of bloodyminded obstructionism and the recent promise of Prabowo's brother Hashim Djojohadikusumo to "control the legislative agenda" confer little confidence.
Prabowo is backed by a majority coalition of six parties, a billion dollar fortune, the electoral support of the vast majority of military families (soldiers themselves are prohibited from voting), and the unswerving belief of some parts of the elite that this impostor from the village must be stopped.
Until he has the full machinery of government in place, Jokowi, by contrast, has behind him a crowd of volunteers and netizens, a few former generals and his party, whose scions , Megawati and her daughter Puan Maharani, are lukewarm about him and feuding with other key figures (particularly Yudhoyono). They have been constantly outflanked by the opposition.
International observers and diplomats are starting to worry. Though Friday's gesture by Prabowo may mollify them a little, it's still unclear how Jokowi will get through crucial but unpopular measures, particularly a reduction in crippling fuel price subsidy?
Jokowi has never looked anything but blithely unfazed.
"In five, six months, you will see that we have more than 50 per cent [support in parliament]. I am very confident," he tells us.
"Politics, every year, every month, every day, always changes … you'll see after the inauguration".
But Prabowo, we insist, is rich, strategic, an unreasonably determined individual. Surely he can block you?
"No," Jokowi replies. "Because the people, they can see."
The rumour de jour as we interview the incoming president is that his enemies are planning to prevent Monday's inauguration itself.
Several hours after we leave his office, his minder calls us to a late-evening press conference at a nearby hotel. Jokowi has just met the three MPs who lead the People's Consultative Assembly, which will conduct the ceremony. They jointly announce that the inauguration will proceed unmolested.
Across the crowded room, Jokowi flashes us his happy smile. It says, as clear a bell, "I told you so".
