Hello, everyone. Good morning, afternoon or evening, and welcome to this edition of Elsewhere in Focus. You can find all the articles in the series here (along with my other diaries).
I should be ashamed—I am ashamed—that many countries come to my notice when someone tweets about a protest or an oppressive force there. People and regions should be celebrated for themselves not because some there are suffering. But there you have it. While I have been aware of news stories of democratic decline in Indonesia, it is stories of recent protests there that made me decide to write this diary.
Be that as it may, we are discussing Indonesia today.
If you read news about the world really closely, you may know that Indonesia saw elections in 2024 that saw the former member of an autocratic regime become President-elect with the support of the Indonesian President. You may also know that there were protests in Indonesia against a law that proposed to change the election rules so that the President’s son may contest the provincial gubernatorial elections. If you have not though, this piece might give you an introduction to what has been happening in Indonesia.
Indonesia—The Oligarchic Threat to Democracy
A Protest
Indonesians took to the streets last week to protest changes that the political elites wanted to bring in to the candidate eligibility law for local elections. This was in response to the Constitutional Court of Indonesia ruling that maintained the current age threshold for contesting elections—30 at the time of registration—while it struck down the requirement that parties and coalitions needed 20 percent of seats in legislature or 25 percent of the popular vote to nominate candidates for regional elections. Channel New Asia reports (22 Aug 2024).
The protestors are opposing parliament’s attempt to pass a bill approved by Baleg, which aims to annul the Constitutional Court's decision on Tuesday.
The court had removed the threshold for political parties, or coalitions of parties, to be able to nominate candidates for local heads in the November elections. It ruled that the 20 per cent threshold of legislative seats in the regional council, or 25 per cent of the popular vote, would not be applicable in the local elections.
The court ruling meant that a party or a coalition of parties may nominate a candidate for regional head even if it does not have seats in the regional parliament or DPRD.
The decision opened the door for Mr Anies, who lost to Mr Prabowo in February’s presidential election, to become a Jakarta gubernatorial candidate again. He was governor of the capital from 2017 to 2022.
Mr Anies has, in recent days, been abandoned by parties that supported him months ago, after the parties joined Mr Prabowo’s Advanced Indonesia Coalition (KIM).
Now dubbed KIM Plus, the coalition of 12 parties is backing former West Java governor and Golkar Party cadre Ridwan Kamil as Jakarta gubernatorial candidate. The position of Jakarta governor is highly coveted as it is seen as a potential stepping stone to the presidency.
The Constitutional Court's decision meant that Mr Anies stood a chance of being endorsed by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) – the remaining party not in KIM Plus – for the gubernatorial race. Prior to the ruling, the PDI-P did not meet the 20-per-cent threshold of legislative seats to nominate a gubernatorial candidate on its own.
The constitutional court also ruled on Tuesday that gubernatorial candidates have to be at least 30 years of age at the time they register to run for elections, in contrast to an earlier decision by the Supreme Court that the age requirement would only apply at the time of inauguration.
Its ruling would close the door on Mr Kaesang Pangarep – Jokowi's youngest child – running for governor of Central Java this November, as he will only turn 30 in December.
The court rulings were widely praised by activists and academics as a win for democracy. But the activists’ joy was short-lived.
The legislative body (Baleg) of Indonesian House of Representatives (DPR) decided to make the age threshold be determined at inauguration rather than legislation, since Kaesang would turn 30 by December and inauguration would be in January. Note: The news reports say the legislature also planned to reverse the court’s decision on 20 percent legislature seat/25 percent vote share requirement (which is rather high) but I couldn’t find details on the exact changes they planned to make. Dita Alangkara and Edna Tarigan report for the Associated Press (AP) about the protests (23 Aug 2024).
The moves triggered widespread condemnation on social media and raised concerns about a potential constitutional crisis. The legislature was forced to cancel passing the law after failing to achieve a quorum.
Widodo, popularly known by his nickname Jokowi, began his second and final five-year term in October 2019 and is not eligible to run again. He leaves office in October.
Widodo’s eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, is the incoming vice president after the same court created an exception to the age limit for the post for former regional leaders. The decision was made while Widodo’s brother-in-law, Anwar Usman, was serving as chief justice. Usman was criticized for participating in a case involving a close relative and later dismissed.
Activists, students, workers and Indonesian celebrities and musicians joined the protest Thursday, voicing concerns about democracy in Indonesia.
Protests were also reported in other big cities, including Bandung, Yogyakarta, Surabaya and Makassar.
In Yogyakarta, at least 1,000 protesters rallied in front of Yogyakarta’s parliament building, the state palace and the city’s ceremonial center. Their demands included voting down the regional election bill, respecting the Constitutional Court’s ruling and rejecting political dynasties.
The Jakarta Post Editorial says that the move has been shelved (26 Aug 2024).
President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo and his supporting political parties might have thought that they could do just about anything and get away with it. But clearly, they couldn't.
In what could be the most tumultuous week for the country in the past five years, a nationwide protest erupted on Thursday as the House of Representatives was attempting to pass an amendment to the Regional Elections Law that would betray the very principle of the rule of law.
The political parties, almost all of which have aligned with the Onward Indonesia Coalition (KIM) that supports president-elect Prabowo Subianto , had pushed for the revision that would strengthen their dominance in the November regional elections and allow President Jokowi's youngest son Kaesang Pangarep to contest a gubernatorial election.
They sought to overturn two Constitutional Court rulings that were issued to prevent political cartel practices by the KIM. The coalition, for one, had joined forces to block opposing tickets.
It may appear that a crisis has been averted thanks to people’s protests, but the larger picture does not look much better. Because democracy decline has been in progress in Indonesia for the past decade and this small arrest may be just a blip.
Amidst a Fall
The Indonesia democracy has been backsliding for a while now. In the past decade of current President Widodo’s rule, many reforms brought in after the fall of the dictator Suharto have been rolled back; or are under threat. One of the most consequential has been destroying—or kneecapping as one Australian media establishment put it—the anti-corruption agency. Tim Lindsey, Malcolm Smith Professor of Asian Law and Director of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society, The University of Melbourne writes for The Conversation about Widodo’s destruction of the post 1998 changes (17 Oct 2019).
Soeharto’s corruption franchise allowed Indonesia’s commercial world to be dominated by a tiny group of interconnected families. But pulling this apart could never even be attempted unless Indonesia established something it never had before – an independent, powerful, committed and untouchable anti-graft institution.
To the surprise of many, the KPK, established in 2002, became precisely this. So it’s not hard to understand why the political and commercial elite have always utterly loathed – and feared – it.
Many, like Habibie, are cronies who had survived Soeharto’s fall. Others are newcomers, but just as keen to reap the spoils of power, including by recovering the vast amounts they have to pay to win election or appointment.
All have good reason to hate the KPK.
In more than a thousand prosecutions, it has lost just one. It has used wiretaps and raids to bring down corrupt police, prosecutors, judges, tycoons, bankers, generals, provincial governors, members of every political party, ministers, and even a speaker of the national legislature. It has been hugely successful and is hugely popular with the public as a result.
Politicians have thrown everything they have at the KPK for more than a decade, but it has repeatedly used its popular support to force presidents – including New Order survivor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono – to back it against the elite.
Until now.
Politicians’ efforts to crush the KPK finally bore fruit on September 17, just days after Habibie died.
On that day, the legislature passed a new law that makes wiretaps, searches and seizures impossible without permission of new supervisory board appointed by the president.
Few hold out much hope the current president, Joko Widodo (Jokowi), will appoint a board sympathetic to the KPK’s anti-corruption agenda. In fact, he recently approved the new head of the KPK, a senior police figure who faces allegations of corruption. The board is expected to block investigations and leak like the proverbial sieve.
Since then, the Indonesian President also introduced regressive labour laws and has been trying to set up a political dynasty.
Across articles, scholars contend that the problem with Indonesian democracy is the survival of older oligarchs from the Suharto era. Ary Hermawan, Graduate Researcher at The University of Melbourne, writes about the threat of the oligarchy for The Conversation.
In Indonesia, the modern oligarchy was formed during the expansion of market capitalism under the authoritarian rule of Suharto (1966-1998), which paved the way for the alliance of powerful bureaucrats and big businesses to amass wealth and power.
Pro-democracy activists and academics have repeatedly sounded the alarm bell about the oligarchic subversion of Indonesia’s democracy.
But things have deteriorated under Jokowi – the so-called democratic and reformist candidate who defeated Prabowo in the 2014 and 2019 national elections.
Jokowi has presided over various attempts by the oligarchy to undermine, if not dismantle, Indonesia’s democratic institutions
In 2019, the Indonesian parliament passed a law that rendered its anti-corruption body irrelevant. Considering the body a threat to their interests, the oligarchs sponsored the issuance of the controversial law.
In 2020, it approved an omnibus law on jobs creation that rolled back the legal achievements made by supporters of the reform movement after Suharto’s downfall.
Mining oligarchs — some of them are members of Jokowi’s cabinet — supported the law because it accommodates their interests.
These setbacks prompted local and international scholars to say Indonesia is suffering from “a democratic regression” and facing “an illiberal turn”.
What is more concerning is not Prabowo’s authoritarian tendency or dislike of democracy but the predatory interests of oligarchs who have put a strain on Indonesia’s democratic institutions to further their political and economic powers.
Most of the richest oligarchs it appears threw their power behind the winning duo—Prabowo and Widido’s son, Raka—, which along with the state support for the two resulted in their winning the elections. But of course it is not these specific people’s victory that elicits concern but the processes that had accelerated under Widodo. Max Walden writes more about this ruling class in an article for ABC (28 Aug 2024).
Herein lies the fundamental problem with Indonesian democracy since the fall of Suharto in 1998.
While that man resigned, much of his military-backed regime did not.
Traditional bases of political and economic power remained intact despite ambitious democratic reforms in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Indeed, Jokowi's own rise from furniture salesman and local politician to the highest job in the land would have been impossible if not for the help of existing elites.
Capturing the presidential palace required the backing of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, led by Megawati Sukarnoputri — the daughter of Indonesia's founding father, Sukarno.
Jokowi's long-time political mentor is former military general Luhut Pandjaitan, whose influence over the president has been such that it is joked he is the prime minister (or, more crudely, "Lord Luhut").
Vedi R. Hadiz and Richard Robison’s piece describes and evaluates this theory of oligarchic politics in their work: Vedi R. Hadiz, and Richard Robison. “The Political Economy of Oligarchy and the Reorganization of Power In.” Indonesia, no. 96 (2013): 35–57. https://doi.org/10.5728/indonesia.96.0033.
Well over a decade after the fall of the Suharto regime, access to and control of public office and state authority continues to be the key determinant of how private wealth and social power is accumulated and distributed. Many of the old faces continue to dominate politics and business, while new ones are drawn into the same predatory practices that had defined politics in Indonesia for decades. Even political parties that presented themselves as the new champions of good governance, such as the Islamic party, PKS (Partai Keadilan Sejahtera, Prosperous Justice Party), became enmeshed in corrupt practices and dubious alliances. Rather than opening the door for political parties to emerge on the basis of claims to ideological or policy agendas, the same Suharto-era political parties continue to operate as escalators for careers and wealth, even if this function is now shared with some new political vehicles. And far from providing a new dimension of accountability and representation, the decentralization of administrative authority and parliamentary politics has extended the old ways of politics from the political center of Jakarta down to a bewildering range of individuals and organizations in the regions and towns of Indonesia.
The article details how the system was formed in the Suharto era and managed to reorganise itself during the reform era, and might continue to outlive challenges unless liberal forces organised properly. Ari Hermawan writes for Project Multatuli—a progressive media outlet in Indonesia—that Indonesia’s intelligentsia is culpable in the homicide of Indonesian democracy (23 Aug 2024). Editor: Zacharias Szumer & Evi Mariani
That thinking is not totally groundless. Jokowi has been accused of weaponizing law enforcement institutions to intimidate his political enemies, co-opting judicial institutions to build his political dynasty, and mobilizing state resources to guarantee the victory of his children in regional and national elections. He is also believed to have recently orchestrated a plot to prevent the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and former presidential candidate Anies Baswedan from contesting the Jakarta gubernatorial election – a race both figures have previously won. Such a power play would clearly be aimed at ensuring that Jokowi’s alliance with his former election rival, Prabowo Subianto, would go unchallenged for years to come.
The problem is that this view tends to frame Jokowi as the sole architect of our political malady, and implies that removing him would be a sufficient remedy. That’s just lazy analysis. The reality is that his rise to power was enabled by different social forces, who have capitalized on his presidency to further their political and economic interests. His enablers, alas, are not confined to a group of coal industry oligarchs who spent billions of rupiah to finance his election campaigns and were later given strategic positions in the Cabinet to create public policies that serve their private interests.
It is high time to acknowledge the elephant in the room: many Indonesian intellectuals are complicit in decimating Indonesian democracy. I define intellectuals broadly to include academics, journalists, activists and religious leaders. Many of these figures have turned a blind eye to, if not directly abetted, Jokowi’s illiberal policies under the pretext of defending pluralism — a crusade against Islamism — and championing technocratism.
Not just journalists and academics of course but pollsters also it appears released opinion polls strategically—flaunting their partisanship openly in some cases—to promote the President’s and the rich people’s interests. Since the survey methodology and data are not transparent, they may be manipulated as well. Be that as it may, these polls have played a part in reducing contestations in the public sphere. It appears, people see polls and at times the protests die out.
Tenggara Strategics says Widodo’s own power may be running out in a piece published in Jakarta Post (2 Sep 2024).
As part of the dynasty building, Jokowi’s son-in-law Bobby Nasution is contesting the North Sumatra gubernatorial election. A handful of other close friends and associates of the outgoing president are also contesting the November elections.
Last week, Jokowi also secured control of the Golkar Party, the country’s second-largest party, by forcing its chairman Airlangga Hartato to resign, paving the way for his right-hand man Bahlil Lahadalia to take over.
Control over Golkar will wield Jokowi some influence in the next administration under his successor Prabowo, whose coalition government includes the party.
But reality has sunk in that much of the power conferred on a president is slowly waning as Jokowi nears the end of his reign.
The MK ruling paved the way for last week’s massive protests. Some of the students had been prepared to occupy the House building, but they backed off after the House said it would not change the electoral law.
But the episode shows that Jokowi is no longer as invincible as he has been before.
It also shows that the House, in which eight of the nine parties are members of his coalition government, is no longer fully under his control. Previously, whatever legislation he wanted, he got it. This time, Prabowo’s Gerindra Party, which had pushed for the changes in the electoral legislation, pulled the proposal.
The Prabowo camp and the Presidential Palace this week were forced to come out with a statement denying any rift between the outgoing and incoming presidents. Prabowo has repeatedly pledged his loyalty to Jokowi, and promised to continue many of his predecessor’s policies.
In recognition of his waning public support, Jokowi in a speech this week said, “Usually, [support] comes in droves [at the start of a presidency]. But, once it’s almost over, it also leaves in droves,” The Jakarta Post reported.
However, as Hermawan says, the problem is not just one man but the oligarchy.
Or Perhaps a Return to Worse Times
The Indonesian system then is a product of the Suharto regime that produced a group of very rich people who still seem to hold power in the country. That along with the creation and operation of patronage networks that, post the 1998-2002 reforms, expanded onto the provincial and local levels ensure entrenched business interests always hold sway irrespective of the system of governance. Or so says the oligarchic thesis.
Who then is Suharto and what happened during his regime? How did he come to power? Tim Lindsay (I wonder if this is the same guy writing for The Conversation) writes for the ABC about the dictatorship in Indonesia that spanned 1968-1998 and shifted the country’s policy from left to West (21 Aug 2021).
Under its new president, Indonesia quickly made a dramatic Cold War u-turn from left to right — away from Sukarno's "Peking-Pyonyang-Hanoi-Phnom Phen-Djakarta" axis, towards the United States.
Despite initial promises of a return to rule of law, the new regime turned out to be a repressive military-bureaucratic autocracy, with soldiers permeating every level of society, from politics and business down to villages. Their role was principally surveillance and intimidation, but Suharto's regime was always willing to use brutal force if it really felt threatened.
Suharto maintained his position by institutionalising corruption and, in time, by stacking the legislature. He closely controlled the three permitted political parties, and imposed tight controls on the media. He was famously able to predict his inevitable election victories to within a few percentage points.
The system produced some improvement in the living standards of Indonesians, but most of the wealth accrued to the family and cronies of Suharto. Here, let me pause to say that it is not clear at all that the left couldn’t have improved the country’s economy if they had been given the chance. I mean, the Dutch left only in 1949.
The ghost of Suharto has proved restless. Most of the New Order elite survived his fall with their power and wealth largely intact. His children are still enormously rich business figures, and no one has ever been tried for the massacres of 1965.
In fact, many major political figures today were powerful under the New Order. To name just two, former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, was a New Order general, while Suharto's former son-in-law, Prabowo Subianto, who allegedly abducted and tortured anti-regime activists in 1998, is now defence minister.
Still, some folks writing for the Conversation thinks there would be checks and balances. Or as Hadiz and Robison say, the oligarchs will reorganize themselves to perpetuate themselves.
Oh, the US Played a Role
It seems to be a scholarly consensus that part of the problem facing Indonesian democracy, not to mention its underprivileged people, is the group of oligarchs that have retained power from the Suharto period. Who brought Suharto to power though? Why, US of course. This is detailed in Vincent Bevins’ book the Jakarta Method as Thomas Kingston writes in his book review of the book for LSE blog (2 Aug 2020).
Some of the episodes featured will be more familiar than others, with the Indonesian Mass Killings of 1965-66 having recently been brought to global attention by the critically acclaimed 2012 documentary, The Act of Killing. While Joshua Oppenheimer’s film placed those responsible for the killings in the public eye, this book depicts the victims themselves in a way that emphasises their humanity, a quality that was so long denied. For example, one of the people presented in the book is a young Indonesian woman seeking her fortune in the capital Jakarta, only to find herself marked out for punishment due to suspected Communist ties simply for being in a union. Due to this, she experiences years of torture, rape and imprisonment as well as ostracism in the present day.
Alongside these personal stories is the bigger picture of the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) – then the third largest Communist Party in the world (and largest non-ruling) with up to three million members – being crushed almost overnight, resulting in the estimated deaths of up to one million people. What is particularly notable about this is that rather than the costly ‘boots on the ground’ intervention seen in Vietnam, this was carried out by domestic players: in this case, the Indonesian armed forces and political vigilantes, with significant CIA/US State Department support. This ‘scorched earth’ approach to the complete annihilation of opponents via proxies, whether through mass murder or campaigns of terror, led to the titular ‘Jakarta Method’ of suppression and extermination being exported around the world, with the CIA often acting as the common element in these atrocities.
Nearly a million people were killed and it appears the US thought that their intervention in Indonesia was a victory compared to Vietnam because they got a West friendly regime without bloodshed (of Americans—can you see why the focus on American lives lost in a US imposed war or violence is highly unethical?).
Despite lip service to the rule of law—and at times even that is not there—the Western governments and businesses continue to support and reinforce these oligarchies be it in Indonesia or elsewhere as Hadiz and Robison note.
It is also true that the growing reach of global governance over the rules of trade, investment, and public management is offset by the extensive relations that exist among various governments and oligarchies in the developing world with international investors and Western governments, relations that are important in sustaining those less developed states and their economies.75 International capitalists are often enthusiastic about the way authoritarianism can sweep away environmental, labor, and welfare coalitions and remove regulatory constraints on their commercial ambitions. For Western governments and international organizations, activities that involve them in the fortunes of oligarchies are often intermingled with strategies to preserve these special advantages for investors.
Before anyone asks, no doubt the same is true for any Chinese interest in the country. How little you know of one compared to the other—except for egregious crimes in the past because an aspect of Western modernity and racism is the belief that those crimes and beliefs are in the past and now, we are better—is a factor of media and societal bias.
Whereto Then?
The Jakarta Post article I share above thinks that Widodo’s threat is declining though that does not say anything about the Presidency to come. Irrespective of that, the rich prey on the poor and the middle just plays along.
What is the solution here?
What can we do?
I think—and you know that I am not an expert—that it is important for us to connect these global links: About the protests, democratic backsliding, and about how economic precarity that compounds social inequalities have contributed to violence and pain in this world. How the rich in our country, especially if our countries are among the rich or just ones with multi-national corporations, employ corrupt practices to sideline the people of a country to enrich themselves and how local elites help just as they helped during the colonial era. And continue to help where colonisation is ongoing.
A solution can only be the strengthening of local and international legal system to facilitate equity and human rights over the greed and pride of corporations, classists and racists. (A solution that is not possible when the West hypocritically support international laws when their allies need it and break them when their interests or allies demand it.)
When we ask for regulatory change that controls businesses—and we must because from Adani to Gates to Microsoft to Apple to Pepsico all of these folks are involved in exploiting people in (some of) our countries—we must ask for the same legal protection for people of other countries. Without that, we would be just states protecting businesses, really. Like mafias or protection rackets (fun fact: the book review of the Jakarta Method says that the US fight seems to be not as much against communism as much as to protect its corporations).
Create awareness and then, fight for change (though some of us only are good at writing such pieces. Sorry).
That is it for today. Take care, everyone. Stay safe. Be well.
May we all have the will to fight these forces of global corruption and supremacy in whatever way we can.
