🇮🇩 Military law takes inspiration from the 90s

Hello friends!

A big one this week for Indonesia — which means a big one for Reformasi! Kevin and I talked about the unfolding events across the country following the passing of the UU TNI law. He gets into what it tells us about the make-up of various parliamentary factions, while I go into the protest movements. I don’t chat much on the podcast about police violence, mostly because it was still very fresh. I’ve tried to make up for that here by focusing on that angle.

We also had a fascinating conversation with Fabby Tumiwa about sustainable energy policy and how that is tracking.

Thanks for reading!
Erin Cook

A win for Prabowo, but a showdown is coming

A huge win for Prabowo Subianto last week with the passing of his military law revisions (UU TNI). On the one hand, this law hasn’t gone as far as its boosters wanted. Deliberations did prune out some of the aspects that had watchers very concerned, particularly the revision that would allow military personnel to get their fingers into business — a New Order-era policy — and the move to hand the Attorney General’s Office over to them. On the other, it has widened what posts in the civilian government can be handed to military (TNI). It’s also raised the retirement age for most ranks. And that’s a slippery slope for a country with a recent history of military authoritarianism. 

We’re not going back to Dwifungsi, say protestors. Dwifungsi, or ‘dual function’, was Suharto’s policy that allowed the military to dominate government and ‘protect’ the country from internal as well as external threats. This really took hold in the 1980s and 90s, and it’s that period in which now-President Prabowo Subianto rose through the ranks. Fears have long been persistent that he is seeking a return to those days, coming up in his previous failed presidential campaigns. 

This law is a far cry from the Suharto days of pure domination, but it’s too close for comfort. Protests erupted immediately across the country with students taking the lead. Much like last month’s protests, the mainstream media does not appear to be particularly interested in covering the movement. Tempo has, of course, stayed the course despite the most revolting attempts at press intimidation I’ve ever seen. 

“Take the military back to the barracks” protestors demanded in Jakarta, where protestors had camped at the parliamentary complex and others conducted a long march through the city to the site on Thursday. The crowds look smaller than last month’s #IndonesiaGelap protests and smaller still than those last year against former president Joko Widodo. Still, it is the second time the Senayan complex has been breached by protestors in as many months.  

Street demonstrations follow a small but high-profile protest at Jakarta’s exceedingly posh Fairmont Hotel on March 15. There, lawmakers discussed the revision prior to tabling. Not if civil society leaders could help it. Activists from Jakarta’s leading groups, including KontraS (Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence), attempted to enter the boardrooms in which discussions were taking place before being forced out. 

“The expansion of the placement of active TNI in civilian positions is not in accordance with the principles of TNI professionalism and risks creating problems such as civilian exclusion from civilian positions, strengthening military dominance in the civilian sphere and policy making, and dual loyalty,” Dimas Bagus Arya, KontraS coordinator, told Kompas. 

There are some more major, huge, potentially country-changing revisions coming down the pipeline. The election law and police law revisions are of the most acute interest to foreign readers as they both have the largest potential to kick off unrest. In this respect, I’m particularly concerned about the police law. Last week, far more military than usual were mobilised to ‘safekeep’ against unrest as the military law was deliberated and there are many, many reports of police violence across the country. This sort of hyper-vigilant security apparatus typically ends very badly in Indonesia. So far, no deaths have been reported — though many injuries — but this consistently heightened security situation is bad news anywhere. 

I think we’ve had a slow-ish start to the Prabowo presidency but after staggering approval numbers, a totally compliant House and just seemingly becoming more comfortable in the position, the rest of this year is key. If Prabowo and his allies can ram through their legislative agenda — and it’s the people that are the issue, NOT the other lawmakers — this year, that gives him plenty of time for everyone to get over it if and when he decides to run again in 2029. 

Demonstrations across the country have that beautiful, deep connection with history that Indonesia’s student movement is always so cognisant and proud of. This is being viewed very much as the formal ‘end of Reformasi’ to these groups, but has not quite cracked the mainstream just yet. Personally, I think that if anything is going to do it, it will be the police law revision in which way more people have way more exposure to ordinary, every day dodgy practices. 

That one is just gearing up now, but it’s been front of my mind Monday morning catching up on events overnight in Malang, East Java. The protests there have certainly been on the edgier side, similar to those in Yogyakarta and Bandung, but there is another element here that I think is an amplified version of what I mean re: interactions with police. Overnight, Malang’s protest has produced tons of terrible video footage of protestors and onlookers being descended upon by dozens of police. 

The movement here is drawing a direct line between the heavy-handed treatment of protestors by police and the Kanjuruhan disaster, the October 2022 stadium crush that left 135 dead. It is widely believed that horrific incident was exacerbated by police firing tear gas canisters into the crowd — a move often seen as a last resort elsewhere in the world, but exceedingly common in Indonesia — though the courts found this was not the case. It’s left an uneasy tension between the police and the people of Malang ever since. 

Which perhaps explains why much of the footage from Malang shows protestors more concerned with the upcoming revisions to the police law than compatriots elsewhere in the country. 

The city’s protest began Sunday afternoon ahead of an organised bukber (breaking the fast together), after which some demonstrators became ‘emotionally provoked,’ as the local arm of Indonesia’s Legal Aid put it. The organisation reports medical support, media and legal observers were also targeted with physical attacks, sexual violence and verbal death threats. 

Like elsewhere in the country, Malang’s local parliament building has been covered in graffiti and paste-ups with small fires set at the gates. 

More to come, I’m sure.

This post has been updated because Malang is not the provincial capital of East Java, I just fully forgot about Surabaya. Sorry!!! March 24 2040 AEST