🇮🇩 Indonesia Gelap erupts across the country

Hello friends!

It’s all happening in Indonesia this week. Protests against budget cuts have turned into a weeklong headache for Prabowo Subianto and his government — but if it’s a case of just upsetting traffic rather than upsetting the palace remains to be seen. 

Protests continue today.

And if you love a good punk versus police story, ooh have I got a link for you. You can find Sukatani here on Instagram. This is quickly being rolled into the wider Indonesia Gelap movement and becoming an anthem of sorts. Another win for the Streisand Effect!

More to come, I’m sure.
Erin Cook

President Prabowo Subianto has spent the week being rocked by the first popular protest movement since his inauguration in October. The student-led Indonesia Gelap protests, or Dark Indonesia, have taken place across the country Monday, Tuesday and yesterday, pushing back against the austerity agenda. It stands in contrast to the Indonesia Emas, or Golden Indonesia, slogan of the Prabowo term. 

The students have been explicit in their demands, listing nine things they want to see resolved via the Alliance of the Executive Board of the All-Indonesia Student Executive Board (BEM SI). Some are a little more pragmatic than others. Number one on the docket is a review of the budget cuts that have shaken the country since a presidential instruction last month. Relatedly, students want more transparency on taxation as well as a review of the enormously expensive (and politically vital) free school lunch program. Other items include ditching plans to revise the mining law reforms and keep the military-civilian leadership balance in check. 

There are also some more, hmm, ambitious demands. The students would like to see an end to impunity and the resolution of human rights violations of the decades (I’m sure Prabowo Subianto will get right on that one) and, hyper-controversially, something to do with former president Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo. This demand has differed wildly depending on who I’m reading and goes from rejecting ‘Jokowi’s shadow in the Prabowo government,’ a reference to his enduring influence, to straight-up calls for his imprisonment on unspecified crimes. 

Prabowo’s Secretary of State Prasetyo Hadi on Tuesday told media the government had no issue with, welcomed even, student protests. It’s the tone that hurts. Protests should be “constructive,” he said, “We don't need criticism that, for example, has a negative tendency, tends to have a banging tendency, negative energy, not for improvement.” 

Still, the protests clearly had him on his toes. He pointed to statements made by Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati about which programs have been targeted for ‘efficiency’ and said those directly affecting students will remain untouched. “There is no dark Indonesia. We will welcome Indonesia to rise. We as a nation must be optimistic,” he added. 

The students may be a bit heavy-handed and revolutionary-minded for the government in tone, but the response here strikes me as wildly patronising. This one won’t help. 

Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, Jokowi’s former ‘minister for everything,’ has had a ‘let them eat cake’ moment very early on in the piece. “If anyone says Indonesia [is shrouded in] darkness, the darkness is within you, not within Indonesia,” he said of protestors on Wednesday. He also stressed that other countries — singling out the US — also have serious problems and that Indonesia is chugging along nicely all things considered. 

In demands and social media posts, this is very much a sequel to last August’s Peringatan Darurat protests that erupted after efforts to change regional election laws to allow Jokowi’s youngest son to run. It was extremely successful and saw parties pull back support. At the time, it was reported that Prabowo himself was struck by the protests and supported the demands. This was, of course, still the cute and cuddly granddad Prabowo era which is very much behind us now.

The big question is: Is this it? To which I say, no, but I wouldn’t write it off. The students are well within their rights to host protests like this and, frankly, given the country’s history, it’s probably as much budaya as batik. There are two elements here that make me think this is one to watch simmer.

Firstly, the students, via BEM SI, have consulted and coordinated with other organisations. A meeting was held between the group and Legal Aid Indonesia alongside Indonesia Corruption Watch ahead of the Monday demonstration. There is a degree of coordination here among three of the most powerful progressive groups in the country that, to me, suggests this is an opening salvo for a long-haul pushback against the Prabowo government.

Secondly, while Prabowo remains wildly popular, some of these budget cuts will hit close to home for many. Eventually. Cuts as deep as he has demanded simply will have an impact, as we’re already seeing in the civil service where workers are bringing their own tissues from home. If and when average Indonesians start feeling it in their pockets, that will be a problem. 

Still, that’s well down the road. Nicky Fahrizal, a researcher at Jakarta’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies, told South China Morning Post that the battlelines haven’t yet been rattled: “These protests have not yet [intensified] the political dynamics because political elites in Indonesia are still comfortable with their positions in [Prabowo’s] coalitions. The opposition is also weak.” 

The opposition question is key. Megawati Sukarnoputri’s PDIP is ostensibly the only opposition force in parliament, but where they line up is still a question. PDIP Secretary-General Hasto Kristiyanto was formally arrested yesterday on charges relating to the 2019 installation of ‘his preferred politician in a parliamentary seat’ as well as obstruction of justice, Corruption Eradication Commission boss Setyo Budiyanto said as reported by Reuters. Hasto and the PDIP have long denied the allegations, and his lawyer Ronny Talapessy said he has been “targeted.”