Looming now in Indonesia: The age of uncertainty

Sep 30, 2024
Malang, East Java, Indonesia. 18th Nov, 2023. Indonesian defense minister and presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto gave a program speech to hundreds of Muslim scholars ''Kiai Kampung''at a building in Malang city, East java, Indonesia, onA November 18, 2023. Image: Alamy /© Aman Rochman/ZUMA Press Wire

There’ll soon be a new leader next door – ageing hardliner Prabowo Subianto. He’s Indonesia’s dark lord with a worrying past of alleged human rights abuses, yet overwhelmingly elected in the February national poll. He’ll take over on 20 October.

Some expect the change from the calming Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo to be seamless. Others fear his tough guy successor will drive out democracy from the world’s fourth most populous nation and return to a military-led autocracy – as in the last century.

What will Jokowi handover after two five-year terms in power? Some improvements are huge, Here’s one example:

A trip between the East Java capital Surabaya and the province’s major hill city Malang through congested villages was once a five-hour ordeal. Now the 80-kilometre journey on a toll road takes about an hour, thanks to Pak Infrastruktur.

Since 2014, Jokowi’s government put down 2,700 km of bitumen at a dazzling pace using 24/7 Chinese labour and loans; the present debt is reportedly US$27.5 billion.

Projects involving national highways, village roads, airports and dams were all transformative, speeding trade. During his decade, the population grew by 27 million. The natural increase matches the number of people living in Australia.

Jokowi in a hard hat symbolised a shovelling aside of the avalanches of blocking bureaucracy. He dug through by treating the government like a business and finding big backers, mainly from Beijing.

Another achievement already introduced, but rapidly enlarged is the national insurance health system. It has serious flaws as the industry exploits its many weaknesses, but it remains an essential helping to ease worries about paying for medical care.

Then came nationalism. Jokowi’s government peacefully negotiated control of the huge gold and copper Freeport mine in West Papua from the US owners and now owns 51% of the company.

Foreign affairs was left to career diplomat Retno Marsudi, a lady of no great achievements. She’s off to the UN so Prabowo has to find another foreign minister, hopefully a civilian.

All good, but Jokowi’s legacy has been clawed by Indonesia’s Gorgons: Korupsi, Kolusi, Nepotisme.

For Jokowi did dirty deals to keep his family in power ripping his reputation as humble Mr Clean from a riverside mudbank shack. His PR story claims he’s a clever climber who got to the top without carrying a rifle or wearing Muslim robes. Nor was he carrying the genes of a feudal sultanate.

What he did have then and now is a mentor – US educated former four-star general turned businessman and prominent Protestant, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, 77.

Officially he’s Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment, but on the street he’s Prince Regent and Lord Luhut, titles that infuriate. He sued two people for defamation and lost.

Before Jokowi became a politician, he partnered with Luhut in a furniture export deal. The younger man got into public life through the mayoralty of the small Central Java city of Solo, then as governor of Jakarta.

Jokowi was seen as pure Javanese, socially low key and physically slim, an ideal model for the nation’s marvellous batik shirts, but insufficiently sinewy to wear the uniform of office. His rank was popularity and here he had five stars.

In 2015, he took Malcolm Turnbull on a blusukan (walkabout) of public markets. That happy scene is for the archives. Today, Prabowo is into media control. He waves from jeeps and shuns the media apart from one awkward tussle with Al Jazeera.

There’ll be little access for independent journalists ahead, so anticipate few facts, but many rumours.

Only skilled cultural anthropologists noted the kid from the kampung was enigmatic and surreptitiously devious, offering ambiguous “why not?” answers to journalists’ questions.

Like Icarus, he forgot the altimeter. Denied under the Constitution to extend his stay, he used his brother-in-law, a Supreme Court judge, to bypass age rules. That let his eldest son, Gibran, stand for office and win the vice-presidency. Jokowi’s cleanskin reputation was flayed nationally, likewise his lad’s.

Old social media accounts allegedly published by Gibran rubbishing Prabowo during his earlier tries for the top job have been dismissed as fakes, but the damaging scuttlebutt has spread.

Prabowo is certainly a worry, and not just due to his sidekick. Australian researcher of military crimes in East Timor, Pat Walsh, has asked if he’s a “fit and proper person” to be president, detailing the commander’s actions in the former Indonesian province. Walsh concluded “no”.

In 1998, Prabowo was cashiered for disobeying orders. That was amid the revolution which saw the authoritarian Soeharto quit the presidency after 32 years of despotic rule.

Prabowo fled to exile in Jordan following his divorce from Soeharto’s daughter, Siti. He publicly returned in 2008 after his former father-in-law died but failed to get into politics via any established organisation.

So he started Gerindra (Great Indonesia Movement), now the third largest party. Calling it right-wing is too simplistic. It’s certainly bombastically nationalistic and carries a whiff of fascism along with contradictory social benefit programs like free lunches for school kids.

Once hostile minor parties are now clamouring to bed down in Prabowo’s coalition and suckle the teats of power, leaving the government to face no opposition.

Helped by a mainly partisan media, Prabowo’s people have been erasing mentions of his alleged human rights abuses. These awkward stories that he dismisses or denies, saw him refused entry to the US and Australia earlier this century.

Indonesia street stalls are already selling photoshopped official portraits of the upcoming leaders to mount on lounge walls. The 73-year old has shed wrinkles; his 38-year deputy has garnered wisdom lines.

An ANU conference of students and scholars in September held an Indonesia Update: How Jokowi changed Indonesia.

Their predictions of Prabowo’s rule run from maybe a matured reformist to the baton-master of Soeharto Mark Two and the flight of what’s left of democracy. Most agree he’s a chameleon. ANU Associate Professor Marcus Mietzner reportedly said:

“Widodo’s enduring mark on his country may well be his decision and ability to put Prabowo into the presidency after defeating him twice and questioning his abilities.”

To a Westerner raised in the culture of confrontational politics, the idea of a winning leader appointing his twice-defeated bitter rival as Minister of Defence sounds as whacky as eating cats – or a splendid example of forgiveness by a Muslim that Christians might emulate.

Whatever, Jokowi’s endorsement has propelled Prabowo into power tethered to Gibran to keep an eye on Daddy’s Nusantara, the new capital on Borneo Island. There are already hints that Prabowo’s not too keen on finding the cash.

Once in control the president may send his vice-president into a dead-end job, like encouraging shy investors to rethink Pappa’s project.

We don’t know, and neither do the bemused ANU conference experts, as confused as those who live in the archipelago. Expect a political future as changeable as the climate – an age of uncertainty.

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