🇮🇩 Mr Mulyono’s very bad week

Hello friends!

It’s been a busy few days in Indonesia. Mammoth demonstrations across the country have seen Parliament delay (or ditch, depends how confident you feel) plans to reform electoral laws. 

With registrations for regional elections this week, we should have a clear idea of what the races will be. Anies Baswedan and PDI-P are a go, but I’m looking forward to what else might crop up. 

So today, a quick look at the protest movement a few days on. 

This has occupied my whole brain for days now, but with the Philippines and Thailand also having some bonkers stories, and that promised Myanmar update on the way, expect to hear from me quite a bit this week. 

Following that, I’ll be in Timor-Leste for the next few weeks. I’ll almost certainly mix-up my publishing schedule during that time but, more importantly, if you’ve got any recommendations you must let me know! 

See you tomorrow,
Erin Cook

That’s Mr Mulyono, not the King of Java

Before President Joko Widodo was president, or governor or wood furniture salesman, he was a sickly boy named Mulyono. For his Javanese parents, casting off this childhood illness included casting off the cursed name and he was renamed Joko Widodo — Widodo meaning healthy in Javanese. An interesting little story about the roots of the president and the cultural beliefs of Solo in the 1960s. 

And, now, potent fodder for the protest movement. No more Jokowi, say protestors, it’s Mulyono now. By evoking the name Mulyono, the tongue-in-cheek theory goes, maybe the people can make him sick again. Bed-ridden for the rest of the term, perhaps. 

The name has been embraced much more happily than that the brand new Golkar chair ​​Bahlil Lahadalia, a very close ally of the president, coined. In his first speech as party boss — on Wednesday no less, right as the House was trying to pull the election law trick — he warned Golkar members off trying to ‘play’ with the ‘King of Java.’ 

Well, no guesses there who that meant. Bahlil later played it down as a ‘political joke,’ and maybe he would’ve gotten away with it too if everything else wasn’t going up in (tear gas) smoke. 

Interestingly, demonstrators outside of Java have grabbed onto the comment and ran with it. Java-centricism has long been a concern for other islands and, even if Bahlil was ‘just joking’, it’s touched a deep nerve. Protest signs and graffiti referencing the comments have proliferated since Wednesday. I personally love this one from Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi, that every single one of my friends from that city shared at least once: 

This is good news for Prabowo Subianto

The protest movement hasn’t been about the president-elect at all. I’ve seen a lot of analysis and thoughts from hyper-politically-educated people who artfully tie the current developments to the concerns about a Prabowo presidency and note that it is an issue of the elites, not strictly the family from Solo. But that doesn’t explain how large the movement has been, particularly its online complement. 

Anecdotes in-coming, academics look away. The widespread support of the movement online has included, from my WhatsApp and social media, plenty of people who voted for Prabowo Subianto — as well as those I’ve never known to engage in politics online at all, ever.  None of that criticism has rubbed off on the president-elect despite it being his coalition that these legal mountains are being moved for. It seems this is particularly prominent in young people and adolescents whose first interaction with national politics was this year’s election and the excitement they experienced of the Prabow-Gibran ticket. Their perspective appears to be that it is much easier to split the closing Jokowi chapter and the opening Prabowo one than it is for older people who remember the whole danged decade.  

Maybe that is fair. It is Jokowi in Istana, after all. The attention on youngest son Kaesang and his wife, Erina, and their outrageous spending is also not helping things. 

A split between the Prabowo and Jokowi camps was inevitable from the moment they teamed up. As Jokowi’s star faded in post-presidency and Prabowo’s shone brighter in office, what incentives remained for Prabowo to continue to honour the predecessor? It was simply a matter of time and specifics on what was to shift the balance of power. 

This is a gift for Prabowo. He can jump off the coattails after the first mainstream damaging challenge to Jokowi’s legacy, all without saying a word. Allegedly. Plenty of rumours are swirling about online provocateurs-for-hire, or buzzers, gaming trending topics to keep the focus solely on Jokowi. Whether this is the schism or merely a bump will depend on what happens next, but if I were Gibran I’d be feeling very nervous. I’m sure Nusantara will have a nice VP suite by October. 

The media has some lessons to share

One thing I’ve been hyper-impressed with is how Indonesian media is covering this. Many of these outlets — especially Tempo — are no strangers to covering huge events and complex developments like this. But, unlike colleagues elsewhere, do not feel the need to maintain a false ‘both sides’ narrative. I hate this approach that has proliferated in political reporting in the US and Australia (probably the UK too, I do not know such things) that insists on presenting ‘both sides’ as a necessity for equality and objectivity. I shudder to think how some of the Australian papers would cover this if it were us. 

Instead, Kompas, the country’s paper of record, has published a series of stories related to the various memeified elements of the last week — characterisations of Marie Antoinette, Mulyono, the stinky armpits (that’s one I’m still getting my head around) — in addition to straight-reporting of the political machinations and protest coverage.  

Similarly, the blue screen emergency warning appeared on the front page of Jawa Pos on Thursday morning. 

Tempo, home to the best newsmagazine covers in Asia if not the entire dang world, hasn’t let the opportunity pass them by. Is history repeating itself asks Wisnu Prasetya as he posts this week’s cover next to one from March 1998 featuring Suharto on the edge of losing power. 

Police violence and security apparatus intimidation widely reported

Amnesty International reported arrests across the archipelago last week, with trouble beginning in the evenings. “Through the evening, many rally participants were arrested and treated in ways that does not reflect professional law enforcement,” Indonesia researcher Usman Hamid said, as per the Jakarta Post. 

Elsewhere, the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) demanded police release those who had been taken into custody: “The dissolution of demonstrations should be carried out using a humane approach,” the organisation had said, noting at least 159 arrests Thursday evening. “Komnas HAM urges law enforcement officials to immediately release all arrested demonstrators [...] and encourages state authorities to ensure the conduciveness of future demonstrations [...] by following the principles of human rights.” 

Dozens of protestors, mostly students, were taken to hospital following clashes. 

Overzealous policing is very common in Indonesia with protests, regardless of the cause. Over the weekend, I came across this short video from the Jakarta local police, Polda Metro Jaya, on Instagram designed to drum up support for police. I haven’t really seen anything like this before and thought it was an interesting tack. 

poldametrojaya

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What happens next? No idea! Very interested to see Parliament back off immediately, and I would like to read more analysis about that. Is it that they knew it was too far, or does it fear the people? Maybe a bit of both.

Still, we’ve have some official candidates by the end of the week. Will revisit then!