🇮🇩 Can Prabowo Subianto have his free lunch and eat it too?

Hello friends!

I’ve hit that point where I’ve thought about this so much I no longer have a coherent thought about it. Luckily, I got this piece in with the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter before my brain stopped working. 

With so much unknown about what a Prabowo Subianto presidency will look like and with so many complicating factors there isn’t much to say just yet! Instead of a nice, sensible analysis newsletter please enjoy this list of interesting things I’ve read in the last few days.

I’ll be back in your inbox tomorrow because we have got to talk about Thaksin asap.

The Health Ministry announced yesterday that 57 election officials and volunteers died during the voting period, with most reportedly suffering from co-morbidities. This is definitely not a good number but it is an enormous improvement from 2019 when more than 550 people died. I didn’t see it at the time but BBC had a fantastic report from the Reality Check team which has more. 

Wednesday had quick counts showing Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka, the son of Jokowi, leading by miles immediately after counting began around 2 pm and Kevin O’Rourke called it before I’d even had my lunch. 

Prabowo’s set to be president and jeeze does he owe Jokowi for it. Well, that’s politics, pal! And the president is only powerful when he’s president. “From this moment on, a new power game between Prabowo and Jokowi begins,” Jun Honna, a professor at Japan's Ritsumeikan University, told Nikkei Asia. “From Prabowo's point of view ... the most important thing is how he will weed out Jokowi. Once his administration begins, I think there will be a growing motivation to reduce Gibran's influence and distance himself from Jokowi's clout as much as possible,” he added. 

I’m fascinated to see what happens next. Have the Jokowi-lovers become Prabowo fans, or can Jokowi withdraw support and make some real trouble for him? I think the Philippines gives us some idea of what could happen, but Jokowi is more wily and less blunt than Duterte so don’t expect any threats for an independent Solo. 

Honna told Nikkei that while Prabowo’s major over-arching pledge was to continue Jokowi’s policies, that may become difficult with his plans to increase military spending dramatically and his free lunch and milk programs for kids and pregnant women gobbling up state funds. Richard Borsuk at NTU agreed: “Markets will watch carefully whether the fiscal discipline that Finance Minister Sri Mulyani has guarded will be maintained — or will Prabowo jack up government spending to worryingly high levels?”

Erwida Mulia is easily one of the region’s best reporters and her work on the election has proved it (again). In Nikkei Asia she turns her big brain to what’s down the road: cabinet picks! While the ticket has enormous popular support, there are a hell of a lot of people and parties that need to be thanked. Hanta Yuda, executive director of Poltracking Indonesia, told Nikkei that he expected the National Awakening Party and/or the Nasdem Party to jump on board. As I write this Nasdem boss Surya Paloh is visiting Jokowi (which I learnt via an excitable post from Hotman Paris on Instagram). 

The Prabowo-Gibran ticket won big, but the fortunes of Prabowo’s Gerindra party fell short of an expected surge given his immense numbers. But the party will — quick count caveat, of course — fall just behind Golkar, leaving it third in size in the House (DPR). 

A comment I saw a lot on Instagram in the lead-up was ‘Presidentku, partiaku,’ or ‘my president, my party,’ from people planning to vote for Prabowo as president and for PDI-P in the DPR, which is very interesting to me. I can’t do maths so I hope someone else will look into that phenomenon, if there is one, on my behalf. 

PDI-P is widely expected to become an opposition bloc. Which, as someone with no dog in the race, is fantastic news because a defining aspect of the Jokowi era is that there hasn’t really been any formalised opposition. Or, it’s also totally plausible something happens and everyone is friends on the same side. 

Don’t worry about it, we’ve done this before, PDI-P secretary-general Hasto Kristiyanto said last week. “During the PDI-P’s tenure outside the government in 2004 and 2009, we were highly appreciated for our role in improving the quality of democracy,” he said, as reported by the Jakarta Post. But — what if it’s only the PDI-P in opposition: “Having no parties other than PDI-P outside the governing coalition could leave the opposition camp almost toothless,” Agung Baskoro, an analyst at political consultancy firm Trias Strategis Politika, told the paper.

Still, I have to remind myself that PDI-P was, at least publicly, happy with Jokowi until recently. In this piece for New Mandala, Sana Jeffrey and Eve Warburton write more broadly that ‘political parties in rival coalitions’ aren’t happy about tactics used to get Prabowo-Gibran over the line ‘but these same parties served in Jokowi’s parliamentary coalition over the past ten years and actively supported his attempts to dismantle checks on executive power. They agreed to stripping the anti-corruption body of its independence, packed top courts with sympathetic judges, and passed laws that criminalise dissent.’ 

Oof, too true. (You’ve got to read this one in full)

There are a lot of ‘who is Prabowo Subianto?’ pieces out there, but I think this one from Frances Mao at the BBC is one of the most comprehensive. I want to flag what I think is a disconnect between the international headlines and the reality in Indonesia. This isn’t on foreign journalists in Jakarta, but I think foreign desks back home and the click-y headline. Prabowo’s human rights record is PART of the story for voters, but it is not THE story. I worry that the focus on his history, while understandable, is giving the impression that voters chose Prabowo because of that past, not for the far more complicated Jokowi effect. This is another angle that I hope gets explored further by someone smarter than me. 

The Conversation has a huuuuge piece here with the editors chatting with a whole roster of the country’s leading academics. They take a look at seven key issues: human rights, the new capital project, the troubling food estate project, nickel! nickel! nickel!, academic freedoms and welfare, and stunting. This piece is a really handy addition to a lot of others linked here because it looks more at policy imperatives than the broader existential issues. “All experts conclude Prabowo-Gibran’s ideas and work programs carry several weaknesses, posing significant risks for Indonesia’s future,” the editors write in the opening paragraphs. 

It’s been 17 years since Maria Catarina Sumarsih first began standing out the front of the presidential palace rain or shine every Thursday. She is demanding justice for her son, Wawan, who was shot and killed in 1998. “When Wawan was shot, my grief transformed into love for others. What I am fighting for is not only the shooting of Wawan and his friends, but all cases of serious human rights violations,” she told the Guardian on her first protest since Prabowo was (unofficially) elected. Prabowo has previously admitted to being involved in the abductions of student activists during those heady days but said he was acting under orders. 

A very sad, but ultimately hopeful look at activists and civil society in the human rights space as they reconcile with the rise of Prabowo — and the disappointments of Jokowi. A must-read.