February 28 2024 Return of the Empire of Demons: Darkness Gathers in Indonesia

Of the legacies of our history from which we must emerge, none are more terrible than those of colonial occupation and its consequences in the social use of force and violence to win security by becoming the arbiters of virtue.

Of the legacies of our history which we must hold close and remember lest we be falsified, silenced, and erased, none are more valuable as informing, motivating, and shaping forces of becoming human than those of seizures of power against tyrants, hegemonic elites of wealth, power, and privilege, and those who would enslave us than our songs of liberation struggle and its costs.

Memory, history, identity; there are stories which we must free ourselves from and those we must claim as ours, and if we are very lucky they are not always the same.

Indonesia has just elected Prabowo as its new President, the apex predator of a political dynasty created by American and British anti-communist purges and a spectacular and bloody coup nearly sixty years ago, which became a blueprint for similar games of counter-revolution, imperial conquest, and dominion as The Jakarta Method.

Beyond the epigenetic trauma of the capture of the state by oligarchs and proxies of distant colonial empires, like the dancing figures in a shadow puppet theatre of an Empire of Demons, the new leader of Indonesia is personally a commander of death squads implicated in war crimes, the brutal repression of dissent, and ethnic cleansing within his own nation and against ethnic minorities and independence movements in Timor and Papua. Yet he won a free election by the people he committed atrocities against; the adoration of the masses can be measured in blood.

In Indonesia’s elections, tyranny and democracy, fear and love, despair and hope, division and solidarity play for the kingdom of our hearts and the dreams of the future we struggle to make real, and I hope that Shakespeare’s words in Henry V still remain true; “When lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler hand is the surest winner.”

As written by Thomas B. Pepinsky in Journal of Democracy, in an article entitled Why Indonesia’s Democracy Is in Danger; “Millions of voters in Indonesia, the world’s third-most-populous democracy, went to the polls on February 14 to choose their next president and members of parliament. Although the full results will not be known until early March, early counts show Prabowo Subianto handily defeating his two challengers for a first-round victory. His Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) is in a close race for second in the parliamentary contests. The Prabowo campaign is claiming victory; as he declared to his supporters on the evening of election day, “We should not be arrogant, we should not be proud, we should not be euphoric, we still have to be humble, this victory must be a victory for all Indonesian people.”

From a distance, this was a normal Indonesian election cycle, with three viable presidential tickets and an array of new and established parties vying for seats in parliament. Campaigning was peaceful, with televised presidential debates, rallies that appealed to the country’s massive youth vote, and colorful banners and posters displayed throughout the archipelago. But for many Indonesians, the voting itself was just one important milestone in an election that had already shaken the foundations of Indonesia’s constitutional order. Prabowo, who serves as minister of defense under incumbent president Joko Widodo (popularly known as Jokowi), is a former general who rose to prominence under Suharto’s authoritarian New Order regime (1966–98). Prabowo’s campaign has tested Indonesia’s electoral laws and upended the norms of its presidential politics. With his dominance at the polls and the dwindling confidence in Indonesia’s political and judicial institutions to check executive authority, the outlook for Indonesian democracy in the coming years is grim.

Prabowo faced two opponents in this year’s contest: Ganjar Pranowo, a former governor of Central Java, and Anies Baswedan, a former governor of Jakarta. Jokowi, who is broadly popular but term-limited after two five-year terms in office, threw his support behind Prabowo, most significantly because he nominated the president’s son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, as his running mate. Prabowo, with his wide name recognition, substantial campaign war chest, and boost from the president, polled far ahead of Ganjar and Anies throughout the campaign.

The three presidential candidates represented competing visions for Indonesian politics and society. Prabowo hails from an elite family who rose to prominence in the early independence period, and his brother Hashim Djojohadikusumo is one of Indonesia’s wealthiest and most prominent businessmen. Prabowo was once married to Suharto’s daughter Titiek, although they are long divorced, and he was a key ally of Suharto’s at the end of his reign. Under Suharto, Prabowo rose through the military’s ranks to become commander of the army’s special forces. In that capacity, he was directly involved in human-rights abuses during Indonesia’s occupation of Timor-Leste (1975–99) and complicit in the violent events surrounding Suharto’s downfall in May 1998. Although he was dishonorably discharged from the military, Prabowo’s campaign invoked his military legacy and recent record as defense minister to portray him as a strong nationalist leader who prioritizes order, stability, and national greatness.

Prabowo ran unsuccessfully against Jokowi in 2014 and 2019, drawing on these same narratives and images, while also making appeals to conservative Muslims and religious identitarians. In 2024, it was Anies who focused on that segment of the electorate, while Ganjar appealed to the same pluralist and progressive constituency whom Jokowi had won. Ganjar, the chosen candidate of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which supported Jokowi in 2014 and 2019, was especially popular among non-Muslim voters wary of Anies’s religious agenda, especially after Anies embraced Islamists in his campaign against a popular Chinese Christian governor of Jakarta in 2017. Ganjar did not, however, inherit Jokowi’s popularity, especially among young Indonesians; opinion polls showed young people to be squarely behind Prabowo and his 36-year-old running mate, Gibran.

Millennials and Gen Z now make up more than half the electorate, and they are simply not old enough to remember Prabowo’s contentious rise and subsequent disgrace.

Given all this, the 2024 contest followed established patterns in the country’s politics. Religion and identity have been important cleavages in Indonesian politics since the independence period, and voters have mobilized around these cleavages in recent elections too. Even Prabowo’s candidacy is nothing new: In addition to running and losing in 2014 and 2019, he was active in the 2004 and 2009 elections as well.

In truth, most of the challenges facing Indonesian democracy long predate the current moment. They include the continued political dominance of the country’s wealthy elite, many of whom can trace their fortunes to the Suharto era or before; the oversized legislative coalitions required to govern in a multiparty presidential system, incentivizing legislative parties to collude rather than compete and minimizing the effectiveness of the rump parliamentary opposition; gross inequalities that produced marked differences in the quality of democracy across Indonesia; antipluralist and illiberal social forces; a military that remains stubbornly unwilling to cede full control of politics to civilian forces; high levels of official corruption; dynastic politics; and electoral clientelism and vote buying that distort representation and partisan politics from the local level on up.

Nevertheless, citizens have participated in free, fair, and competitive multiparty elections since 1999. Indonesians have witnessed several peaceful rotations of executive power, and elections have been hard-fought contests in which powerful challengers have conceded defeat, albeit sometimes begrudgingly. Indonesia’s civil society is robust and active, print media is largely open and often critical, and many political parties compete for popular support. As in any consolidated democracy, there is broad agreement that elections are the sole legitimate route to political power: They are, to quote Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, “the only game in town.” The risk of a catastrophic breakdown of representative institutions is low, as is the threat of violence of the type that rocked Indonesia during the turbulent 1960s.

But democratic consolidation requires that the rules of the game be known and fixed rather than malleable and subject to change at the whim of elites. Indonesian democracy is not as consolidated as its repeated elections have suggested. The trends have been worrisome for the past decade, with the 2024 election only deepening fears and the country looking more and more like a clear case of democratic backsliding. Jokowi has, for example, used the legal means at his disposal to clamp down on challenges to his authority of any variety.

During the 2024 election campaign, democratic decline accelerated because of decisions taken by ruling elites, especially the president himself—the first being his embrace of Prabowo as his chosen successor. Until now, presidents in post–New Order Indonesia have remained above electoral politics, a norm buttressed by legal limitations on presidents’ campaigning. Jokowi, however, openly stumped for Prabowo and Gibran, challenging longstanding interpretations of what a sitting president is allowed to do. Jokowi claims that presidents may campaign if they do not use state resources, as the letter of the law reads. But Anies and Ganjar say that Jokowi did just that, using state institutions such as the military and police—which ought to be neutral arbiters of the law, and which ought to show no partisan or political favoritism—against Prabowo’s opponents.

A more direct blow to Indonesian democracy arrived in October 2023, when the country’s Constitutional Court issued a stunning ruling about Gibran’s eligibility to run for vice-president. According to the Indonesian constitution, the minimum age for presidential candidates is 40. Gibran will be only 37 on inauguration day, and therefore ineligible to run under any regular interpretation of the constitution. But in October, the Constitutional Court handed down an opinion by Chief Justice Anwar Usman (who happens also to be Jokowi’s brother-in-law) which held that the age limit did not apply to any candidate who had previously served in a regional elected office, thereby allowing Gibran, who is mayor of Surakarta (known as Solo), to register as Prabowo’s running mate.

Although the public outcry against this decision was swift and substantial, and Anwar was subsequently found guilty of violating the court’s ethics code and demoted, Gibran’s candidacy was unaffected. The plain implication is that Indonesian constitutional law does not constrain elites seeking to circumvent it. Few would have seriously argued that Indonesian law treats the wealthy and powerful the same as it does regular Indonesians. Still, the Constitutional Court’s brazen decision to intervene on behalf of a sitting president’s son was shocking, and further proof that powerful interests with ties to state institutions and the country’s authoritarian past still direct the course of its politics.

For this reason, it is important to separate Prabowo the individual from the politics surrounding his campaign. Prabowo’s history, political style, and personality are worrisome: He has a famously short temper, and his actions over the years inspire little confidence in his commitment to democratic institutions, to liberal values such as freedom of speech and conscience, or to the rule of law. Although he does not have the crassness or brashness of a Rodrigo Duterte or Javier Milei, it is hard to predict how he will react to unfavorable news or to any legitimate democratic challenge. But like Duterte and other world leaders, Prabowo’s politics replace a commitment to law and order with a preference for order over the law. For the many observers who believed that it was Prabowo’s 2014 defeat that allowed Indonesian democracy to survive, his victory in 2024 is a harbinger of the country’s democratic decline.

But Indonesian democracy is more than just the attitudes and values of its political leaders. Presidents shape democratic politics, but they do not determine what democracy is. Democracy in Indonesia, as in any other country, is a political system that emerges from the actions of elites, the masses, and social groups together—working through established institutions, following norms of mutual tolerance and forbearance, and peacefully resolving legitimate political differences through the orderly rotation of power via free and fair elections. Institutions matter, but they are not self-directing; laws matter, but only when they are applied faithfully and in accordance with constitutional procedures and governing norms. Anwar, as chief justice, made his fateful decision on behalf of the Constitutional Court, the guardian of the constitution, for the benefit of Jokowi and his family as well as Prabowo himself.

So it is unsurprising that in the final days before the election, Prabowo’s opponents feared that other state institutions, such as the armed forces and the electoral commission, would be similarly vulnerable to political manipulation on election day. Given that Prabowo’s campaign, which worried about a possible unified anti-Prabowo ticket in a second round, predicted a single-round victory, the other campaigns were afraid that electoral and security institutions might tilt the first-round balloting in Prabowo’s favor so as to avoid a runoff.

Although it is still early, there is no evidence of any systematic irregularities. But representatives from the Anies and Ganjar campaigns are pledging to investigate the electoral process nevertheless, claiming that the election was marred by “structural, systematic and massive fraud.” Worryingly, Anies has been reported to authorities for commenting on a film released on February 11 that alleges the electoral process was subject to manipulation by Prabowo backers.

In November 2023, just after the Constitutional Court’s decision, Indonesian journalist Goenawan Mohamad sat for an interview on KompasTV, a mainstream news channel. Known as a sharp-witted critic and thoughtful political analyst with decades of experience, Goenawan described the Indonesian state as “broken” (rusak). Although his use of this word received wide attention, less noted was what he used rusak to modify: not politics or elections or institutions, but the state (negeri) itself. And the term negeri refers to more than just the state in a formal sense. It connotes something closer to the state and society together—the country, its institutions, and its people. Goenawan was describing not just a crisis of democracy, but a crisis of Indonesia.”

As written in The Guardian’s Editorial entitled Prabowo’s win is dismal news for democracy; “When Joko Widodo took power in Indonesia 10 years ago, his victory brought relief as well as celebration. It was not merely that the former Jakarta governor was the first president to be elected from outside the political or military elite. It was also that he defeated ex-general Prabowo Subianto, who had attacked direct elections and said that he would take the country in a more authoritarian direction. There was every reason to take that threat seriously. Mr Prabowo was dismissed from the military – and barred from entering the US – due to allegations of the abduction and torture of activists by men in his unit, though he has always denied involvement.

Yet now, as the president leaves office, Mr Prabowo is set to replace him – thanks in large part to his former rival’s (unofficial) support. With 205 million voters and 820,000 polling stations spread across the thousands of islands in the world’s fourth most populous nation, completing the final tally could take weeks. But Mr Prabowo, currently defence minister, enjoys a commanding lead in “quick counts” by independent polling firms, which have proved accurate in previous contests. That suggests he will not face a runoff.

Having reached his two-term limit, the president – known to all as Jokowi – is leaving office with enviably high popularity ratings and a track record that includes steady economic growth, infrastructure development, slowed deforestation (though the country has fallen short of targets) and healthcare improvements. But he has also overseen a democratic backsliding. When he first took office, some supporters voiced concern that his principles might even hinder his ability to get things done. In reality, he has not only proved adept at making deals with the old elites but has undermined key institutions and strengthened restrictions on freedom of speech. The final straw, for many of his enthusiastic early supporters and reportedly for cabinet colleagues, has been his electoral manoeuvring.

Jokowi said he was neutral. But it was plain that he had thrown his weight behind Mr Prabowo rather than his own party’s candidate, Ganjar Pranowo. His 36-year-old son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, ran as Mr Prabowo’s vice-president, despite being four years short of the usual minimum age for the role, thanks to a handy ruling from the constitutional court. The chief justice happens to be married to the president’s sister. Many of those who once supported Jokowi have concluded that his priority is his legacy.

Mr Prabowo also benefited from his improbable rebranding from fiery would-be strongman to a cuddly, cat-loving grandfather figure, aided by social media. Half the country’s electorate is under 40; many voters do not remember his past or the days of military dictatorship under his father-in-law, Gen Suharto.

Those who do predict that “winter is coming”. Some suggest that the new president may conclude that he does not need outright autocracy, but can achieve what he wants within the current system. A better cause for optimism may be that Jokowi’s tenure saw the largest student protests since democracy’s return in 1998, prompted by his weakening of the anti-corruption commission and other harsh new laws. His political trajectory is further evidence that the work of defending reform and rights cannot rest on the shoulders of a single leader. But Indonesian democracy appears to have plenty of defenders, including among the young. There is every sign it will need them.”

As written by Rebecca Ratcliffe and Richaldo Hariandja in The Guardian, in an article entitled Winter is coming’: activists’ fears as Prabowo Subianto likely wins Indonesia election: Former son-in-law of late dictator Suharto was discharged from military over alleged abuses dating back to 1980s; “The presumed election victory of Indonesian presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto – a former army general with a history of alleged involvement in torture and disappearances – marks a dark chapter in the country’s history, activists have warned, while vowing not to give up their fight for justice.

Prabowo, 72, a former special commander under the Suharto dictatorship, is the apparent winner of Indonesia’s presidential election after unofficial counts gave him a strong lead. On Wednesday night he told supporters that his win would be a “victory for all Indonesians”.

The results have provoked fear among activists, however, that accountability for past atrocities will fade even further under Prabowo, and that his future government will have little regard for human rights.

“Winter is coming, whatever the name,” said Usman Hamid, executive director of Amnesty International Indonesia. “But the fight must go on … all of the perpetrators have to be brought to justice.”

Prabowo, a former son-in-law of Suharto, was a longtime commander in the Kopassus special forces, but was discharged from the military after Kopassus soldiers kidnapped and tortured political activists in 1998.

Of 22 activists kidnapped that year, 13 are still missing. Prabowo always denied wrongdoing and has never been charged in relation to the allegations, though several of his men were tried and convicted. Prabowo was previously banned from entering the US.

Prabowo is also accused of involvement in rights abuses in Papua and Timor-Leste, including a 1983 massacre in which hundreds of people, most of them men, were killed in the Timorese village of Kraras. He has denied the allegations.

Muhammad Isnur, head of the Legal Aid Institute Foundation of Indonesia (YLBHI), said the election of Prabowo may be “too painful” for the families of those who disappeared in 1998, who are still fighting for justice.

“The result is as we predicted. But we are still disappointed,” he said.

Prabowo had maintained a lead in pre-election surveys after rebranding himself as a cuddly grandpa-like figure and securing the tacit support of the outgoing president, Joko Widodo, whose son ran alongside Prabowo for the vice-presidency. The incumbent president, who is known as Jokowi, was accused of unfairly boosting Prabowo’s campaign in order to safeguard his legacy and establish a dynasty.

“Too many intricate enabling conditions and manipulations have shown the involvement of Jokowi in the election. He had mobilised everything. That’s why the result is predictable,” said Muhammad. Jokowi’s office has denied that he sought to interfere in the election.

Academics, journalists and civil society groups should prepare for the worst, Muhammad said. “We need to be aware of every risk that could happen to us in the future and try to make a list of mitigations. We need to be prepared.”

In the runup to the election, Prabowo was the only presidential candidate who did not attend a press freedom event and did not respond to a questionnaire by Human Rights Watch on key rights issues facing Indonesians.

As results emerged on Wednesday, Veronica Koman, a human rights lawyer living in exile in Australia, wrote on Twitter/X: “Many Indonesians are saying that they want to leave the country because Prabowo is winning – similar phenomenon to US citizens when Trump was winning. The big difference is … ours is out of FEAR.”

Position Among the Stars film trailer