After an hour's delay – hurry up and wait will be a recurring theme of the day – members of Indonesian President Joko Widodo's staff finally arrive and we are on our way, heading west.

After months of negotiations with senior officials, Fairfax Media has been granted rare and privileged access to the man universally known as Jokowi ahead of his trip to Sydney for the ASEAN-Australia summit.

The questions that need asking in the Australia-Indonesia relationship are pressing. How can we achieve closer ties, negotiate our differences more amicably, build better trade? How do we work together to negotiate China's growing aspirations in the region? And what kind of country is our nearest neighbour, this sprawling democracy, becoming?

In the meantime, we're on the road. Jokowi is already on the unofficial campaign trail, even though the presidential election is not due until April 2019.

Our immediate destination is the An Nawawi pondok pesantren, or Islamic boarding school, about 70 kilometres from central Jakarta in a conservative village called Tanara. Even at this early hour, the choking Jakarta traffic ensures the drive takes nearly three hours.

A list of school rules stares down at us from the walls of a classroom at the pesantren, as we eat takeaway McDonald's fried chicken at 9am. Stealing, smoking, alcohol, drugs, internet cafes, electronic devices such as mobile phones, writing letters to the opposite sex and joining demonstrations are all banned, the rules state.

Jokowi arrives at 10am and is greeted by thousands of locals, as well as police chiefs, high-ranking military officers, Public Works Minister Basuki Hadimuljono and perhaps most importantly, Ma'ruf Amin, an imam and head of the Indonesian Ulema Council, the roof body of the country's Islamic scholars.

In the baking sun, the president spends half an hour addressing a group of small businesswomen who will be able to access waqf (a form of Islamic finance) loans of 1 million rupiah ($100) to grow their businesses through the new bank in the village.

From there, the president and the imam walk to a nearby tent in which a couple of thousand people have been waiting patiently for two hours in 40-degree heat (hurry up and wait), reciting verses from the Koran and singing songs.

The imam tells the crowd that, under Jokowi, the economy is no longer "top down", but instead built from the "bottom up" (he uses the English terms) and that this president "has always responded to the requests from the people".

Jokowi, himself a former small to medium businessman, urges the people to work hard, to avoid loan sharks who charge 40 per cent interest (charging interest is forbidden in Islam) and to use the new bank to grow their business instead. He is part-business coach, part-president.

On the stump, taking questions from the businesswomen, he is in his element,  but in the tent his performance is wooden.

It doesn't matter, though; the orang kecil or "little people" love Jokowi - even in this conservative part of Banten, on the island of Java, where he was out-polled by his rival, former military strongman Prabowo Subianto, in the 2014 presidential election.

In 2019, his staff confide, he is leaving nothing to chance.

The blusukan, or surprise visits to local markets of the 2014 campaign, have been swapped for more visits to locations like this religious school. In doing them, Jokowi hopes to head off a re-run of attacks from his political opponents that he is not a good Muslim.

Even his choice of outfit – a traditional sarong and songkok, or black prayer cap – is no accident.

It's hard to overstate the significance of Jokowi's victory in 2014, which upended the established political order in Jakarta and elevated a small businessman-turned-politician from outside the Javanese elites to the nation's top political job.

Jokowi already enjoys a commanding lead in the polls over Prabowo, the man he defeated 53-47 per cent in 2014, and who is likely to run again.  Polling published in January in The Jakarta Post by Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting showed 53 per cent of respondents backed Jokowi, when asked to choose from a list of candidates – of which there are many at this point. Prabowo was the next most popular candidate listed, but secured just 18.5 per cent.

But the results in Java in 2014, which according to the Home Affairs ministry will have about 108 million of the 196 million eligible voters across Indonesia in 2019, set out the challenge for the president.

While Jokowi claimed strong majorities in the Javanese provinces of Jakarta, Central Java, East Java and Yogyakarta, Prabowo thrashed him by close to 20 percentage points in the more conservative provinces of West Java and Banten.

This is Jokowi's weak point, and he knows it.

As the Lowy Institute's Aaron Connolly puts it, "Jokowi and his people are worried he will be attacked over identity politics. In 2014, newspaper ads ran saying he was a Christian, or Singaporean-Chinese. He made a minor pilgrimage to [Mecca in] Saudi Arabia to deal with that".

"Jokowi is from a moderate stream of Islam, the Nadhlatul Ulama, they are considered to be more Sufi-influenced and have more traditional Javanese beliefs too," Connolly says.

With an August deadline to choose a vice-presidential running mate fast approaching, the president is making regular public appearances with a vast array of candidates from different political parties who have hitched their wagon to his own PDI-P party in the hope of forming an electoral alliance and securing the VP slot.

After the pesantren, our van joins the 30-car presidential motorcade as it winds its way through small villages.

The roads are potholed and lined with people, and the president's black Mercedes (numberplate Indonesia 1) slows down frequently so he can throw notebooks and T-shirts to children.

After an hour on the road we stop for lunch with the president and those same senior officials, army and police officers in a modest restaurant. Already people are starting to gather outside.

As lunch winds down, Jokowi stands and moves to an anteroom. A senior adviser beckons us over to follow.

Over 35 minutes, a confident and in-control president answers our rapid-fire questions in English, in a deep baritone voice, and only sometimes refers to his notes.

He wants deeper engagement with Australia, suggests we should join ASEAN, praises the defence and counter-terrorism cooperation between our two nations and welcomes foreign investment from the region.

Jokowi's vision for an open, liberalised Indonesian economy is clear, despite the undercurrents of protectionist economics that run through Indonesia society. On the vexed question of China and its growing economic and political influence in the region, he will not bite.

His nation, he adds, is not a claimant state in the South China Sea, referring to the dispute over a tiny portion of the North Natuna Sea which China claims is within its so-called "nine-dash line".

"They understand, they understand," he says of China.

Finally we arrive at domestic politics and the looming election.

The 2016 and 2017 attacks on an ally of Jokowi, the Christian governor of Jakarta Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, better known as Ahok, ended with the governor jailed for blasphemy and raised serious questions over whether Indonesia could still be considered a moderate Muslim nation.

The case gained worldwide headlines and stoked fears that the 2019 presidential election would be a rerun of 2014, and that the president would come under attack from conservative Islamic parties.

Is that what we can now expect from Indonesian politics?

"Last year we had 101 elections, this year we have 171 elections, last year not only [elections] in Jakarta, everywhere in the regencies, in the cities, in the provinces, there are elections this year also. There are differences in Jakarta, that is politics," Jokowi says.

"Now, I think our people can learn from last year’s election, not only from Jakarta but also from the other regions, the other cities, the other provinces. Our people can every year learn from the elections. I am sure then our politics can be more stable. In Indonesia, our constitution respects freedom of speech and freedom to form groups."

Jokowi dismisses suggestions that foreign fighters returning from Syria or Iraq could pose a problem for Indonesia, as they have done in Australia and elsewhere in the region.

"No, no. We are the largest Muslim country in the world, Indonesia. We have 220 million Muslims in Indonesia. I think if there’s only one, two or three people do this, it is very small, it is very small," he says.

"We are moderate Muslims, tolerant Muslims, we are modern Muslims. For example, 220 million Muslims ... imagine if just 5 per cent are radical, or 10 per cent are radical that means 22 million, 5 per cent that means 11 million."

"As you know we have Muhammadiyah, we have Nahdlatul Ulama, our biggest moderate Muslim organisations. We, the government, Muhammadiyah and NU together we have to say to the people that Islam in Indonesia is modern Islam, tolerant Islam."

Later, the Australian National University's Marcus Mietzner, an expert on Indonesian electoral politics, tells Fairfax Media not to listen to Jokowi's answers but to "look at his actions".

"He is pandering to the Islamic community. He has dramatically increased the frequency of his visits to Islamic boarding schools, he is cultivating Islamic leaders, promising to include the Islamic community in land distributions and address inequality. All of this he has done to anticipate the threat towards him," Mietzner says.

"And finally he is moving to the last step, finding a VP candidate acceptable to the Muslim community. That’s what the search is about. He is saying one thing at a normative level, what he would like to face [in the election], but preparing for a different reality."

Interview over, Jokowi stands and enters a prayer room - cameras flashing all the while - and then leaves the restaurant. A huge crowd has gathered outside, surrounding Indonesia 1, waiting to catch a glimpse of the president and perhaps even a selfie.

As his staff usher him towards the limo, he pauses. Hurry up and wait. Jokowi walks over to crowd and starts shaking hands and posing for photos.

A woman throws herself at his feet, crying hysterically, relaying a story about how the railway company has forced her out of her home. Almost everyone else is ecstatic.

Your correspondent has only ever seen one other politician enjoy the same sort of rapturous welcome up close – former prime minister Kevin Rudd.

Unlike Rudd, though, Jokowi is the real deal, and is in the box seat to secure a second term and 10 years as the leader of the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation.

The question remains, though: what sort of compromises will he need to make to get there?