By Edward Aspinall
Indonesia’s presidential election on 9 July will determine not only the future government of the country but also the fate of its democracy. Over the past decade and a half, Indonesia has been the democratic success story of Southeast Asia. Thailand has lurched back to its tradition of military coups, and Malaysia and Singapore have languished under semi-democratic regimes, but Indonesian democracy looked like it was striking deep roots. Nobody would claim that the country didn’t have serious political problems – chief among them, pervasive corruption – but its many achievements include the evolution of a robust media, the sidelining of the military from daily political life, a strong culture of open electoral competition, and significant devolution of power and finances to the regions.
Now, the country faces a stark
choice that could determine not only the health of Indonesian democracy, but
perhaps even whether it survives. The two candidates running in this election
embody very different aspects of Indonesia’s recent political history, and they
promise to take the country in very different directions.
The choice
The leading candidate is Joko Widodo (usually
known as Jokowi). Politically, he is purely a product of the new democratic
era. A political nobody at the beginning of Indonesia’s democratic transformation,
he came to prominence by being elected twice as the mayor of the Central Java
city of Solo and then once as governor of Jakarta – a pathway to national power
that would have been impossible under the old authoritarian system. Known for a
low-key, meet-the-people style of interacting with constituents, he comes from
a humble background, though he achieved success as a furniture exporter prior
to entering politics. His style of governing emphasises bureaucratic reform,
improved service delivery, expanded social welfare services and a
consensus-based approach to resolving social conflict.
Though we don’t really know
Jokowi’s views on many critical issues (such as how to resolve the conflict in
Papua), he would be the first president without firsthand experience of
official politics in the authoritarian period and, arguably, the most reformist
president yet. While we would not expect dramatic change under his leadership,
he would pay patient attention to strengthening Indonesia’s democratic institutions
and getting the wheels of Indonesia’s massive bureaucracy turning more
smoothly, and more cleanly.
Prabowo Subianto, Jokowi’s only
rival in a two-candidate race, has promised to respect Indonesia’s democracy.
But there is much in his personal history, his rhetoric, and his political
style to suggest that a Prabowo presidency would pose a significant threat of
authoritarian reversal. In contrast to Jokowi, Prabowo is one of the purest
imaginable products of the authoritarian New Order regime (1966–98) of President
Suharto. One of a handful of leading military generals by the time of Suharto’s
fall from office, he was the son of an important early New Order economics
minister and was married to Suharto’s daughter, Titiek. Prabowo’s younger
brother, Hashim Djojohadikusumo, like many of the children of former New Order
officials, went into business, while Prabowo was groomed for a career in the
army. Hashim is now one of Indonesia’s richest men, as well the chief
bankroller of Prabowo’s presidential ambitions. Prabowo himself is also
extremely wealthy, living on a luxurious private ranch where, among other
things, he keeps a stable of expensive horses. The brothers, it should be
noted, have primarily become rich in rent-seeking parts of the economy, such as
timber and other natural resources.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s,
Prabowo enjoyed an unusually rapid rise through the ranks of the army under the
patronage of his father-in-law. In the mid to late 1990s, when the New Order
began to fray and civilian reformers tried to work out who in the army might be
sympathetic to democratic change, nobody counted Prabowo among the potential
reformers. Instead, he was a leader of the palace guard and, in the final
months of the regime, was in charge of a dirty war–style campaign to abduct
anti-government activists, several of whom remain missing to this day.
President Habibie dismissed Prabowo as commander of the Army’s Strategic
Reserves the day after Suharto resigned, 22 May 1998, when it was reported to
him that Prabowo was moving his troops close to the presidential palace without
the approval of the Armed Forces Commander. Prabowo was discharged from the
military for his role in the kidnapping of the activists and for other
transgressions.
Since the early 2000s, after a period
abroad, Prabowo has worked hard to build a political career. From the start he
focused on the goal of winning the presidency. He first tried to win the
nomination of Golkar (the electoral vehicle of the old New Order regime) as its
presidential candidate in 2004. When this plan failed, he decided to form his
own personal vehicle, the Gerindra (Greater Indonesia Movement) party, an
organisation with the sole goal of taking its leader to the presidential
palace. In 2009, he ran as a vice-presidential candidate alongside Megawati
Sukarnoputri, but at that time, too, he made it clear that his ultimate goal
was the presidency. Although Gerindra achieved just 11.8 per cent of the
popular vote in this year’s legislative election, Prabowo was the only other potential
presidential candidate who came even close to Jokowi in the public opinion
polls. He was eventually able to pull together a coalition of five major
parties to nominate him as its presidential candidate.
A year ago, it seemed that Jokowi
would win the presidency without serious challenge. He was a media sensation,
and his popularity ratings far outstripped other potential candidates. In the
last six months, however, Prabowo’s campaign has surged. Though Jokowi still
maintains a lead it has narrowed dramatically, and is now in single figures.
Nobody now takes a Jokowi victory for granted. In such a context, we need to
think seriously about what underpins Prabowo’s growing appeal, and what a
Prabowo presidency might mean for Indonesia.
The Prabowo challenge
How can we explain the rapid rise
in support for Prabowo? One explanation is that Jokowi’s campaign has been
poorly organised, as has been argued
persuasively by ANU academic Marcus Mietzner. Prabowo’s effort, by
contrast, has been single-minded and massively funded from the start. His
brother Hashim has pumped in untold millions and, since his polling has
improved, Prabowo has also been able to extract major funds from other
Indonesian oligarchs and political allies. He has also gained the support of
two of Indonesia’s main media tycoons, whose television channels have
flagrantly campaigned in favour of him: Prabowo even appeared at the final of Indonesian
Idol to award the prize to the winner. (To be fair, the news channel owned
by another tycoon, Surya Paloh, has been almost equally biased in favour of
Jokowi.) An army of paid social media workers floods the cyberworld with
pro-Prabowo material and counter negative stories about him; the electronic
media has for many months been similarly flooded with advertisements extolling
his virtues.
It is also increasingly obvious that elements of Prabowo’s styling and message appeal strongly to a part of the Indonesian population. Prabowo has presented himself in a way that distinguishes him starkly from other members of Indonesia’s political elite. Part of this is visual: Prabowo’s campaign rallies involve a large element of pageantry, with marching bands and military-style parades; he dresses himself in uniforms that evoke Sukarno and other nationalist heroes from the 1940s and 1950s; he even uses old-fashioned microphones that look like those used decades ago by Sukarno. In addition to these stylistic elements, however, there are at least three features that distinguish Prabowo from other mainstream Indonesian politicians.
First is the nature of his message.
Prabowo promotes an amalgam of nationalist and populist themes reminiscent of
demagogic politicians the world over. In all his campaign speeches he stresses,
first and foremost, nationalism, saying that Indonesia is a country of great
natural riches that has for too long been exploited – even enslaved – by
foreigners. Indonesia’s riches are being sucked out to benefit outsiders and it
is time, he says, for the country to stand on its own feet and reclaim its
dignity and self-respect. He also talks at length about the plight of the poor,
and how they suffer as a result of corruption, neoliberalism, neocapitalism, foreign
interference and various other ills. Indonesia’s riches are stolen from the
Indonesian people; it is time for them to be reclaimed and enjoyed by all
Indonesian.
Nothing in this so far is
particularly unusual: economic nationalism, concern for the plight of the
“little people” and condemnation of corruption are all standard tropes of
Indonesian political discourse. But Prabowo’s language is far more dramatic –
even militant – than that used by most politicians. What is even more unusual
is that he presents these critiques along with fiery condemnation of
Indonesia’s entire political class, which he depicts as irredeemably corrupt
and self-serving. As he told a crowd of workers at a rally last May Day: “The
Indonesian elite has lied for too long… lied to the people, lied to the nation,
lied to itself!” Later in the same speech, he added, “All are corrupted! All
are bribed! All our leaders are willing to be bought and willing to be bribed!”
Depicting himself as the anti-political politician he explained:
We cannot hope for too much from
our leaders. They are clever talkers, so clever, so clever that they end up as
clever liars! I went into politics because I was forced! I was forced, brothers
and sisters! Politics… God help us! Of fifteen people I meet in politics,
fourteen of them are total liars….
Or, as he put it more recently, on
a visit to Aceh province: “How easy it is to control Indonesia. All you need to
do is buy the political parties!” Of course there is a deep irony here: Prabowo
is himself a product of the very highest level of Indonesia’s political elite,
and a major oligarch in his own right. Yet there’s no denying the consistency,
and the force, of his message.
This leads us to a second part of
Prabowo’s appeal: the passion, even sometimes fury, with which he delivers his
message. This also distinguishes him from most mainstream politicians –
especially the current president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who is so careful
and measured in his statements that he is often criticised for indecisiveness,
but also Jokowi, whose personal style is unusually casual and low-key. At a
recent campaign speech in the North Sumatran city of Medan, the subject of much
scrutiny, Prabowo worked himself into a frenzy condemning various unnamed
foreign stooges and people who steal the people’s money, commit fraud, engage
in slander and so on. As Liam Gammon argues,
“it says something about his frame of mind that the only time he gets so worked
up as to lose his composure is when he’s talking about some devious clique of
unnamed ‘others’ who conspire to exploit the national wealth and cheat the
Indonesian people.” Indeed, Prabowo’s passion doesn’t look concocted on such
occasions; he appears as if seized by deep personal emotions. It looks, in
fact, as if he is thinking about his personal enemies.
This particular strength is potentially also a weak point. Prabowo is known to have a combustible, even unstable, personality. He is prone to outbursts of rage that sometimes involve physical violence, and reports of him throwing punches, mobile telephones and ashtrays when angered by his associates or underlings have circulated widely. Former factional rivals from within the military have described his personality flaws quite openly, and one, A.M. Hendropriyono (himself a man with a bad human rights record), has denounced him as a “psychopath.” Prabowo’s emotion-laden public speeches could thus be a double-edged sword, and may turn off some voters, especially women. Even so, there’s no doubt that many Indonesians – especially poorer ones – enjoy the unusual spectacle of a prominent figure getting so exercised, apparently on their behalf, in condemning the very politicians and elites they themselves abhor.
The third element of Prabowo’s
appeal is the promised antidote to all these ills: leadership that is “firm” or
“strong.” Indeed, we might think of the promise of strong leadership as not
merely the central, but as virtually the only significant plank of
Prabowo’s political program and his strategy for government. In a recent
analysis, University of British Columbia historian John Roosa has compellingly argued
that “in Prabowo’s mind, everything about a country – the quality of its
economic system, culture, and international standing – depends on the
‘leadership factor.’ The solution for all of Indonesia’s ills is a ‘strong
national leadership.’” Accordingly, Prabowo’s speeches are self-referential and
self-regarding to an extent that is unusual in Indonesian politics, and he
often teasingly asks his audience whether he is being “too tough” or “too hard”
in his denunciations.
In many casual conversations I have
had with ordinary Indonesians over recent months, almost all those who say they
will support Prabowo repeat the same refrain: Indonesia needs a leader who is
tough, who will stamp down on corruption, who will stand up to foreign
countries, who will prevent the repeat of “losses” such as East Timor, and so
on. Public opinion polling also shows that voters who value firm leadership as
a factor in making their choice overwhelming favour Prabowo. The irony, of
course, is that for all his talk of leadership, Prabowo has actually not led
anything in the last sixteen years, except for a political party that was
concocted simply to provide him with a platform. When he did last hold a senior
leadership position in a state body, he was fired from it.
A threat to democracy?
Prabowo is directing his campaign
for the presidency through democratic channels. Recently, he has taken pains to
state that he accepts Indonesia’s democratic system, and that he intends to
preserve it. If he takes power, he will do so with the support of a coalition
of political parties that have an interest in preserving democratic
participation. He will also be operating in a system that includes robust
checks and balances, as well as a strong media and civil society. Why, then,
should we be concerned about the implications of a Prabowo presidency for
Indonesian democracy?
The obvious reason is Prabowo’s
authoritarian past and his personal record of responsibility for human rights
violations. Much of the criticism from Indonesian civil society groups has
focused on this aspect, and Prabowo became angry in last week’s televised
debate when Jokowi’s running mate, Jusuf Kalla, tried to goad him on the issue.
Another source of concern is the
hints at explicitly anti-democratic elements in Prabowo’s program. He has
repeatedly stated, for instance, that he wants to return Indonesia to the
“original” 1945 Constitution, as it was signed in 18 August 1945. In other
words, he wants to return to a version of the Constitution that places
concentrated power in the hands of the president and removes virtually all the
key democratic procedures and controls found in contemporary Indonesian democracy,
most of which have been introduced by a series of constitutional amendments
since 1998.
Prabowo frequently drops hints,
too, that democracy itself, or at least the version that is practised in
Indonesia, is a chief source of corruption and various other ills. In last
week’s televised debate he talked about “destructive” democracy and stated he
wanted to create a “constructive” democracy instead. He told one gathering of
retired military officers last month that democracy “exhausts us.”
The real danger, however, lies in
the combination of Prabowo’s emphasis on the leadership principle and what we
know about his personality. It’s clear that he views himself as embodying the
solution to Indonesia’s many problems and believes that imposing his will is
the key to achieving national renaissance. At the same time, his public
statements invoke unnamed enemies, and contain implied threats against them or
others. (Confronted by journalists, for example, he often doesn’t answer their
questions but instead asks what outlet they represent, as if he is compiling a
private list of those who treat him disrespectfully.) Add to this already
combustible mixture his propensity for flying into violent rages when he does
not get his way, and we have every reason to predict that Prabowo could be a
president who would be unusually impatient with democratic procedures, and
punitive towards political foes.
The first year or two of a Prabowo
presidency might go smoothly enough. But after a while, once he started to run
into the normal frustrations and compromises that come with democratic life –
when he hits a roadblock erected by the parliament, the Constitutional Court,
the media, or some other checking institution – it’s all too easy to imagine a
President Prabowo invoking emergency powers or using some other extraordinary
method to sweep such obstacles aside. Already there have been reports of active
military officers campaigning for him, and it would be relatively simple for
him as president to reactivate the army’s “territorial structure” and bring the
security forces back into politics.
Of course, a Prabowo government
would not be a carbon copy of Suharto’s New Order; Indonesia has changed a
great deal since those days and there would be much resistance to any
authoritarian reversal. But one important global trend over the last couple of
decades has been the emergence of what are sometimes known as electoral
authoritarian regimes: systems where elections persist but civil liberties and
democratic participation are manipulated to allow the ruling group to entrench
itself. Think of a place like Putin’s Russia, and we might have a picture of
what Prabowo’s Indonesia will eventually look like.
How did this happen?
Of course, it’s not unusual for
there to be nostalgia for the authoritarian past, or even a full-fledged
authoritarian reversal, a decade or so after a country makes a transition to
democracy. Political scientists have for years been speculating that Indonesia
was ripe for the emergence of a populist challenger to the existing system.
Even so, many analysts of contemporary Indonesian politics – me included – have
in recent times adopted a positive take on Indonesia’s democratic achievements.
Many things seemed to be going right: the media is robust, civil society is
strong, and attempts to wind back democratic space have almost always been
defeated by public resistance. Indonesian democracy seemed to be consolidating.
At the same time, deep problems
have long been visible and have been the topic of extensive scholarly analysis.
Now, some of these problems may be coming home to roost. Even if he doesn’t win
in July, the fact that Prabowo is within arm’s reach of the presidency should
warn us that Indonesian democracy is more fragile than many of us were prepared
to concede. Shortcomings in three areas seem especially important for
explaining Prabowo’s rise.
First is “transitional justice” –
the task of investigating and punishing officials responsible for past human
rights abuses. Indonesia’s failure on this score has been all but total. After
Suharto fell, there were numerous investigations and even some trials, but in
the end no senior military officer or other official was found guilty and
punished for any of the well-documented human rights abuses that occurred under
the New Order. Indeed, one might say that the price the army extracted for
getting out of politics was an informal guarantee that none of its leaders
would be punished for past misdeeds. The fact that someone like Prabowo, who a
decade and a half ago was so discredited that he had to leave the country, is
now able to launch a strong presidential bid is testimony to the consequences
of this failing.
Some of those who are now Prabowo’s
opponents have themselves to blame for this situation: in 2009 Megawati
Sukarnoputri chose Prabowo as her vice-presidential candidate, making it clear
that for her and her party, a poor human rights record was politically
inconsequential. This year, Prabowo’s supporters ask, with some justification,
if Jokowi’s party didn’t worry about Prabowo’s human rights record back then,
why should it be making an issue of it now?
Second is the breadth and the depth
of political corruption. For years now, on almost any day you can open the
pages of any major Indonesian newspaper and be assaulted by stories of
corruption in haj funds, beef import scandals, land scams, oil smuggling,
medical equipment scams, textbook scams, mark-ups in the building of hospitals
or sports stadiums – you name it. Those involved include everyone from the
highest ministers in the land down to the lowliest town councillors and civil
servants. To be sure, much of the media exposure is itself a sign of progress
in the fight against graft. Even so, Indonesians would be forgiven for
believing that democracy has produced a political system in which virtually
everything and everyone is indeed for sale, as Prabowo has repeatedly been
saying.
The April legislative elections,
which were accompanied by a veritable orgy of vote-buying and electoral
manipulation, themselves form an important part of the backdrop to Prabowo’s
rise in the polls. No wonder so many Indonesians – especially poor ones – take
delight in Prabowo’s denunciations of the political elite and his promises to
eradicate corruption through strong leadership, despite his own entanglement in
New Order business and patronage networks.
Third, and closely related, is the
transactional style of politics that has become central to Indonesia’s
democracy. More so than in many countries, official politics in Indonesia has
been characterised by what American political scientist Dan Slater calls
“promiscuous power sharing”: the propensity of parties with widely differing
ideological outlooks or social bases to put aside their differences for the
sake of shared access to the patronage resources offered by government. In
Indonesian politics, it often seems as if no political alliance is principled
or based on policy affinity; instead, everything is up for negotiation and ripe
for a deal. Most of the cabinets formed by post-Suharto presidents have thus
been broad “rainbow coalitions” in which virtually every major party is
represented. This system has itself helped to generate the public
disillusionment on which the Prabowo challenge feeds, but it has also helped
Prabowo build his political coalition. As well as his own Gerindra, four other
major parties have fallen in behind his presidential bid: Golkar, PAN, PKS and
PPP (the final three are all Islamic-based). There is an authoritarian strain
in each of these parties, but one would think that at least some of their
leaders would be reluctant to support a leader who threatens a revival of New
Order–style politics, partly because some of their leaders (especially those of
PAN and PKS) were themselves directly involved in the movement to topple Suharto.
More to the point, Prabowo might
ultimately threaten the democratic system that has benefited these parties so
much. He has successfully wooed them, of course, by offering ministries and
other positions of power. (Bakrie for instance, boasted that Prabowo had
offered him the previously unheard-of post of “chief minister.”) In short,
Prabowo has built his coalition by engaging in the very horse-trading and
deal-making that he condemns. In contrast, Jokowi refused to cut such deals
with potential coalition partners, losing out on support from PAN and Golkar.
This is just one of the deep
ironies – some would say, hypocrisies – of the Prabowo challenge. Prabowo has
managed to mobilise a large coalition that includes many political forces that
have benefited greatly from democratic reform and from the climate of
deal-making and corruption that he himself so vigorously denounces. For
example, a close look at Gerindra party candidates and campaigners in the
regions quickly reveals that most of them are not at all hard-edged populists
or ideologues committed to Prabowo’s professed vision of a strong and clean
Indonesia. For most, Gerindra is just the latest stopping point in long
political careers that have led them through other parties, and they are just as
well-versed in the techniques of “money politics” as other politicians. (In one
Central Java electoral constituency where I conducted research earlier this
year it was the local Gerindra candidates who engaged most massively in
vote-buying.) If Prabowo is a modern version of the Fuehrer or Il Duce – as
some of the memes circulating on social media among Indonesian liberals only
half-jokingly assert – he is one who is coming to power without the strongly
ideological political party that carried along those earlier demagogues.
This is a major contradiction at
the heart of the Prabowo challenge. His campaign is stridently populist,
anti-system and anti-elite in its oratorical style. But it is a campaign that
has emerged from the very heart of that system and its elite. That
contradiction is currently his Achilles’ heel. When he condemns the “political
elite” at election rallies, lined up behind him on the stage are party leaders
who themselves personify that elite – including some of its most unpopular
representatives, such as Golkar’s Aburizal Bakrie. When Prabowo condemns
corruption, politically informed Indonesians know that many of the parties and
party leaders who now back him are themselves deeply implicated in some of
Indonesia’s most notorious corruption cases. In last week’s TV debate, Prabowo
said the Indonesian economy had been “wrongly managed”: standing next to him as
his running mate was Hatta Rajasa, President Yudhoyono’s coordinating minister
for economic affairs. Jokowi’s supporters have been quick to seize on such
contradictions, distributing through social media witty postings and images
satirising Prabowo and his new alliances.
It is thus far from clear that
Prabowo will win. For every voter who finds Prabowo’s angry rhetoric and his
promise of strength appealing, there is still at least one more who prefers
Jokowi’s low-key affability. Even so, the race is open, and it is momentous.
Phrases like “turning point” get overused in discussions of politics. In
Indonesia in 2014, the term is apt. Whatever choice Indonesian voters make, it
will be highly consequential. A Jokowi victory will likely allow for continued
slow consolidation of Indonesia’s developing democratic system, and it might in
fact lead to significant improvement in the quality of the democratic
institutions. A victory by Prabowo carries major risks of serious authoritarian
regression. The outside world should be worried by this prospect, but the
biggest losers will be Indonesia’s own people.
Edward Aspinall is an Australian
Research Council Future Fellow and researches Indonesian politics at the
Australian National University. His article originally appeared 17 June in Inside Story.
