COURTING DISASTER

 LOSERS WHINGE, WINNERS RULE

From left:  Winner, then losers   Credit Kompas

A tip to take a wee shot at understanding the way of doing politics in Indonesia:  Suspend rationality.  Now imagine PM Anthony Albanese offering Scott Morrison a ministry - choice from five.  Not such a smart move for Down Under but OK for next door.

Come May the Indonesian Constitutional Court should respond to challenges by the two losing candidates following the 14 February national presidential election results.  Cashiered former general Prabowo Subianto won convincingly as president-elect on his third attempt at the top job.

The hearing from a parade of outraged witnesses has been making for good daytime TV during the past fortnight, though now on pause for the Idul Fitri religious holiday.

Debate in court is a great improvement on street reactions to the 2019 election result when the defeat of  Prabowo triggered riots, torched cars, the killing of ten and the wounding of almost 400. Speculation that it was pre-planned has been rife, though the Prabowo camp  denied responsibility.

Readers might imagine this trouncing might have encouraged Prabowo, 72, to slink away from further contests and retire to his equine stud in the hills.  Instead a few months later he was welcomed back into the political ring; the man who thrashed him at the polls Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo made his prancing rival the Minister of Defence.

This gave the disgraced former soldier an arena to keep going in national politics, access  to the public purse and space for another crack at the job he’s long craved. (The Constitution bars a president from more than two terms so Jokowi wasn’t in the circus this year.)

 It also ensured Prabowo and his right-wing Gerindra (Great Indonesia Movement Party) would shut up criticising the Jokowi government.

Pearls & Irritations can announce the Court's most likely decision now:  The plaintiffs' claim will collapse and Prabowo will remain president-elect till he takes over from Jokowi on 20 October.

The near certainty of this result is underpinned by these factual pillars: Prabowo and his running mate Gibran Rakabuming Raka (who by curious chance happens to be Jokowi’s eldest son) won 58.58 per cent of the vote.

Next was former academic and Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan with 24.95 per cent, then former Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo with 16.47 per cent

Even if discrepancies, graft, pork-barreling, nepotism, Jokowi's meddling and a swag of other charges brought by the complainants are proved, the vote for Prabowo was so overwhelming, that the alleged wrongdoings wouldn’t be weighty enough to negate the result.  It would also upset the electorate in no mood for a re-run having made their choice so clearly.

Then there's the timing.  The case opened in the last week of March during the holy fasting month leading to this week’s Idul Fitri celebrations.  Though work officially continues up to the big event on 10 April the reality is that an empty tummy takes its toll.

Cameras have caught court officials nodding in the early afternoon though not because they agree with the evidence.  Speeches drone through the still air along with the mesmerising hum of air conditioners and fans.  Hunger gnaws and nicotine addiction screams.  

In the contest of legal arguments versus the imagined evening break-fast meal there’s just one winner.

Another factor: After Idul Fitri comes a two day plus holiday supposedly for earnest prayer and the mudik ritual; this means returning to distant villages to seek forgiveness from relatives for inattention to family responsibilities.  

The traffic soup is thick - about 194 million are expected on the roads - so ideal for those of different or no faiths to stay home and fix roof leaks - except the hardware shops will be shut and tradies gone.

As the hearing started Ganjar  reportedly  said Prabowo should be disqualified ”on the grounds that the way he registered himself had violated election law in addition to ethical problems resulting from nepotism and a coordinated abuse of power".

This argument pings off last year's dramatic decision by the Constitutional Court to allow Gibran, 36, to run as vice president even though he was four years younger than legally permitted.

But who needs rules and precedents when you’ve got the Chief Justice on side? Anwar Usman, who has since lost his position because he didn’t recuse himself from the case, was Gibran's uncle when the controversial decision was made.  Sticklers for the rule-of-law expected the resolution to be rescinded.  It wasn’t.

 Commented one political newsletter: “This trial (the current Constitutional Court hearing) serves more as a national face-saving exercise for Anies and Ganjar by showing the general public that the odds were against them from the start.

“Moreover, the trial provides these two former candidates with a national platform to segue into a new political direction whatever form that may take.”

Jakarta gossip suggests that might include offers of ministries by the President-elect when the court proceedings are over, following the example set by Jokowi in asking not just Prabowo into government, but also his sidekick.

Seeking the Vice Presidency in the 2019 bitter contest was business tycoon Sandiaga Uno.  He’s now Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy.

Should Anies or Ganjar get similar invites, will either seize the bribe to stay on the public payroll - or will they take an ethical stand and trash any offers ?  

The responses will  determine how far principles remain - or have tumbled down the landslip-prone hill of Indonesian democracy.

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First published in Pearls & Irritations, 9 April 2024:https://johnmenadue.com/losers-whinge-winners-rule/

THE END OF THE ROAD TO A FAIRER SOCIETY

FAREWELL DEMOCRACY 

There’ll be a good indicator - if not a firm result - by the time most Australians go to bed tonight.  Then we’ll know if the ferociously ambitious Prabowo Subianto - Indonesia’s political psychopath   - will be running the nation next door and booting out democracy.

The Economist Intelligence Unit has consistently tagged Indonesia as a “flawed democracy”, behind Malaysia and the Philippines.  Whatever the analysts think today the Republic will be holding a monster - reportedly the world’s biggest one-day election.

Imagine your local supermarket eleven times larger.  Every shelf is sagging,  every product in abundance - only the labels differ with few ingredients listed.  Now transfer the lot onto social media and the street, smothering anything green with vinyl advertising. Presto - the 2024 Indonesian election campaign.

It’s a vast country but only three sets of candidates (all male, Muslim and Javanese) are slugging it out on 14 February to run the Republic for the next five years.  So what’s the big deal?

Forgotten by the AI headliners is that this isn't solely about former Jakarta Governor Dr Anies Baswedan, cashiered one-time general Prabowo Subianto and Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo, all desperate to be El Supremo.  

Thousands of  Indonesians are standing for a cluster of 20,000 national, regional and local seats next Wednesday. From the banners of their fizzogs, it seems half the citizenry has its hat in the ring - though it’s only 200,000.  

With a population jostling 280 million, Indonesia is the world’s fourth largest country after India, China and the US - and it’s right next door. Be warned, says Canberra -  don’t go if you don’t know; millions will be on the streets and not all will be happy.

Although all candidates are smiling on their placards, that's not everyone's default position. Fist-waving and finger-pointing are essential. The few women have lots of lippy and jilbabs (headscarves);  the young guys bruised foreheads supposedly from head-banging while praying in hard-floor mosques.  

In religious Indonesia, where all citizens must belong to one of six government-approved faiths, it seems that piety is the main qualification for secular administration.

Looking at their forced grins the hopefuls would be happier sneering and snarling, which is how they’ll behave once they lose - as most will. Hoaxes abound,

Citizens need to be 17 or over though underage marrieds can also visit the ballot box in their street or village.  Voting is often in the open and there are so many booths the show is often done and dusted by noon. The system is first-pass-the-post.

Around 205 million have registered.  Based on earlier figures 80 per cent should turn up, though voting isn’t compulsory. Purple ink on the finger shows you’ve already been to a booth. Social media is full of tales of bribes, but your correspondent has been unable to verify.

The cost is enormous and most of the big backers are Indonesian businesses.  One stab is US $ 500 million, but that seems far too low.  For an analysis, go here.

Half the population is under 40 and the prospective legislators have little idea on how to reach a tech-savvy generation with no knowledge of last century’s authoritarian politics and ruthless dealings with dissidents.  Much has been spent on cartoon characters and silly memes, a real insult to thoughtful voters.  Sadly they’re the minority.

The formal handover of power will take place in October.  Till then the admin of President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo will continue.

Of the present 575 polis in the Big House, many come from little parties who back Jokowi.  That means he does what he likes and the only opposition comes from NGOs in rented offices with leaky ceilings and shared toilets.

Fortunately Jokowi has been relatively benign, good on toll roads, factories and exports, poor on human rights. He has an 80 per cent approval rate - or did until he backed his eldest son Gibran Rakabuming to stand with Prabowo, earning widespread wrath from academics.

His successor will inherit a steady slackening of enthusiasm for democracy.

With ten or more individuals chasing every seat in the regions and districts, how does the elector make sense of it all?  Best just follow the simper or smirker you like best, or shove a hole through your party's choice using the nail supplied - a left-over from the days when many electors were illiterate. (The rate now is around one per cent and decreasing,)

The Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan  (Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle) is the only stand-alone as it scored more than 20 per cent of the votes last time.

The others have formed coalitions, diluting their impact and independence, but ensuring a slice of the pizza cut by the winner.

Monday and yesterday were campaign-free, giving candidates a breather and the chance of a clean up.

The candidate pairs - pres and vice - need a simple majority to win. At this stage it's reckoned no one will get that score, meaning a run-off by the top two on 26 June.  But check tonight.

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Duncan Graham has an MPhil degree, a Walkley Award, two Human Rights Commission awards and other prizes for his radio, TV and print journalism in Australia. He lives in East Java.

 

 First published 14 February 2024 in Pearls & Irritations; https://johnmenadue.com/farewell-democracy-link-b-pic-prabowo-subianto/

KIDS & POLICY - NOT AN ACID-WATER MIX.

 TAKING THE FOREIGN OUT OF AFFAIRS                     

How to get the young involved in current affairs? Politicians shy from the question fearing Gen Z’s latent power could shrink their authority, so best seek an answer elsewhere. Like Indonesia?

"Now here's another point" : Dr Dino Patti Djalal, (left) versus presidential candidate Dr Anies Baswedan

         The queue was long, wide, pressing, hot and young. It spilled beyond the five-star hotel’s car park and forecourt. Waiters chatted excitedly about the day ahead, surely a Taylor Swift concert?

But the jolliness was jarred by the walk to the venue past ranks of pavement traders selling Palestine flags ready for the street protests to come.

For this was dawn on a Saturday in Jakarta this month and the masses had come to a show with the turn-off title From Non Alignments to Creative Alignments. It featured foreign affairs, international politics and fixes for an ailing world; with wars in Gaza, Ukraine and Myanmar there was no need to fossick for issues.

Why did an estimated ten thousand teens willingly spend a full Saturday getting involved in international relations with the sort of enthusiasm displayed for the Coldplay concert a fortnight  earlier? 

Here’s the formula: Hire a plush monster hall and make tickets free. Get an entrepreneur with headline acts on speed dial, then let him loose unconstrained by the fear and caution of a government department or uni admin. 

Then it supposedly becomes ‘the biggest grassroots foreign policy group in the world …determined to form a large international relations community with mature and sensitive insights on bilateral, regional, and global issues.’

The go-to guy is Dino Patti Djalal, 58.  If Indonesia used silver spoons this fella was born with a mouthful.

He entered the world in Belgrade where his father Hasjim Djalal was a diplomat - and later deputy FM. The lad was schooled in the US, Canada and the UK where he scored a PhD at the London School of Economics.

In 2010 as US ambassador he won fame by inspiring the diaspora to plug back into the nation they’d fled last century when Soeharto was president . But his ambition flew him too close to the sun; he quit Washington for a pitch at the presidency in the 2014 election.

His pedigree and qualifications failed to move the oligarchs who bankroll parties in Indonesia; they prefer clerics, business tycoons and old soldiers to intellectuals too canny to control. Indonesia’s Icarus hit the ground hard and learned a discomforting truth: Openings for used diplomats are rare. 

But he had enough money to start an enterprise, rightly reckoning that the student idealism that had driven out the autocratic Soeharto in 1998 and steered  in democracy was floundering to find the right map to power ahead.

Uni courses in politics were  pedestrian - why not make them energetic and accessible?

Together with academic and policy adviser Dewi Fortuna Anwar, who got her PhD from Monash and has a CV longer than this story, they started the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia. 

FPCI calls itself a ‘non-politic and independent foreign policy organisation to discuss and introduce international relations issues’ to diplomats, government officials, academics and students, business people and journalists.

Sounds good - but impotent without the clout of the Republic’s Foreign Affairs Department.  Despite this handicap the FPCI seems to have captured interest by running workshops and seminars.  

The presenters wear T-shirts and don’t peer down their spectacles at uppity students.   Lecturers are engaging, locals but overseas trained.

In an earlier interview with this writer he said: “Our mission is to promote peace and bring foreign policy to the public.That means finding out how to talk to ordinary people about these issues.  They may not seem interested but that changes when, for example, the price of imports rise.”

At the annual conference this month the bill-toppers included two of the three presidential candidates - former governors Anies Baswedan (Jakarta) and Ganjar Pranowo (Central Java). Cashiered former general and alleged human rights abuser Prabowo Subianto was invited, agreed, and then pulled out.

Dino asked the polis to address issues but not to campaign,  which is like urging a fish not to swim.

Ganjar appeared online from West Papua but Anies turned up and was mobbed by fans. Unlike the average plodding politician  he cracked jokes, exhausted the local media with his availability and avoided the booby-trap question which could have exploded his hopes on the spot.

Who’s his most admired figure? A magazine editor who once published a readers’ poll that put the Prophet in seventh place spent five years in jail for blasphemy. Anies got his sequence right, then added Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi. 

Others on stage during the day included a pondering of international professors telling of their fears and hopes for relations with China. All spoke in English as did many in the audience, students using the show as a chance to dazzle friends.

Ten embassies have caught on to the opportunities running stands promoting their unis. Australia sells quality and proximity, its rivals add scholarships and accommodation. Academic life used to be marketed as austere and sober, Now it’s offered as intoxicating.

To lighten the mood between sessions on the failure of diplomacy to keep fighters in hangars and drones unarmed, a try-hard lady filled in with stand-up comedy. Hopefully, she’ll refine her act before next year’s event.

By then there’ll be a fresh president and government.  The new mob may not be so tolerant of Dr Dino and his bid to poke the noses of the people into the affairs of the State.

First published in Independent Australia, 18 December 2023: 

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/getting-younger-generations-involved-in-politics-,18184

 

RI POLITICS: NO ROOM FOR SMART WOMEN

  

Equality is risky - best stay with blokes    

                             

 

Indonesians have just witnessed a messy, badly produced TV ‘debate’ between the politicians jostling to run the world’s fourth largest democracy facing a national election in less than two months.

 

Just a few weeks ago it seemed Indonesian politics was edging towards modernity by recognising that half the voters are women with different values, needs and expectations.  

 

Not to be. The oligarchs have spoken: In a nation that claims to be progressive and tolerant there's no place for a woman in any leadership team The six candidates for the Presidency and Vice Presidency are men, all Javanese, all Muslim.

 

For a short but hopeful time in the juggling for positions, it seemed possible that a woman might get a go.   Mid-year three ferociously ambitious mega-rich guys were seeking a partner for the 14 February poll. What date could be more auspicious for starting anew?

 

The paramours were lusting after a Vice President who could relate to those who’ve matured this century in a democracy, albeit flawed. Voting is voluntary. In the 2019 presidential election, the turnout was 82 per cent.

 

The obvious choice was Yenny Wahid, 49, and she was willing. 

 

The second daughter of the Republic’s fourth president, the late Abdurrahman (Gus Dur) Wahid (1940 - 2009), had the professional and personal qualifications for high office, so who’d win her hand? It was the sinetron (soapie) spellbinding the nation.

 

 The lady most likely headed a tiny socialist party with Buckley’s chance of scoring even a footstool in the 575-seat national parliament by going alone. She was being wooed for her qualities, ancestry and reputation for relating to the young. 

 

When the Indonesian Army trashed East Timor after locals rejected Indonesian rule in the 1999 referendum, Yenny was a correspondent with the then Fairfax Press, a journo in the coverage team that won a Walkley Award, Australia's highest prize in journalism.

 

(Use of forenames is Indonesian style. It doesn’t imply partiality.)

 

 Now she heads the Wahid Institute, an Islamic think-tank working for ‘the development of both Indonesian as well as Islamic society, improving the welfare of lower classes … building democracy and fundamental justice, and expanding peace and non-violence.’

 

In 2009 the World Economic Forum named Yenny a young global leader. She has a Harvard master's degree, a persuasive personality and international experience.

 

She’s a liberal Muslim with all the credentials. Her great-grandfather Hasyim Asy'ari founded the world's largest Muslim organisation Nahdatul Ulama (NU) which claims close to 100 million members.

 

In Indonesian culture the way women dress and behave is scrutinised for signs of unorthodoxy; Yenny, a married Mum of three, came across as an Ibu Ibu, a safe homely matron, which doesn’t mean a soft touch. 

 

 

In an earlier interview, she quashed suggestions of subservience: “This is the way I express my right to wear what I want. (She uses a half-jilbab headscarf.) It’s my symbol of struggle.

 

“It might be easier if I was a man in this macho society, but then the pressures could be physical rather than mental.”

 

Youngish voters will dominate the  February ballot according to The Jakarta Post: ”Around 114 million Indonesians eligible to vote next year are under 40.”

 

The Kompas national newspaper commented: “Young people are always the target of the contestants' votes (but) not many policies are in favour of the younger generation.” 

 

The quinquennial election is the only time the ignored feel frisky. Indonesia’s teals have clustered around the centre-left Partai Solidaritas Indonesia (PSI) which includes Yenny’s politician husband Dhohir Farisi, and the socialist   New Indonesian Nation Sovereignty Party (PKBIB) chaired by Yenny.

 

Both were formed this century by student Utopians after Reformasi - the 1998 fall of the autocrat General Soeharto who ran the nation for 32 years. 

 

In the late 1700s, the French Revolution beheaded the ruling royalty to ensure they’d never return. In 1998 the Indonesian activists who brought down Soeharto naively assumed his cronies would disappear along with the king of the kleptocrats, all wreathed in shame.

 

The students were too soft, so last century’s oligarchs still rule and plunder, promise and default. A Macbethian tragedy wrote one academic. Another commented that Indonesia’s experiment with democracy has ‘been hijacked by the dark forces that held the country back before.’

 

Yenny’s problem shouldn’t have been gender, except among ultra-conservatives. The world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation had its first female president in 2001. As vice president Megawati Soekarnoputri inherited the job when Yenny’s father was impeached.

 

Even as coalitions, the small parties don’t have enough cash and candidates to steer the state, so their best chance of getting close to the driver is as VP. 

 

The PSI nominated Yenny to stand with Ganjar Pranowo, 54, of Mega’s PDIP - the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle.

 

But Mega has no love for the Wahid family,  so no-go. Likewise with disgraced general Prabowo Subianto, 72, Indonesia's Donald Trump. 

 

Insiders then predicted Yenny pairing with the former Jakarta Governor Dr Anies Baswedan, 54. The one-time Education Minister and University Rector has the skills needed to work with a smart female.

 

The US-educated Anies has been nominated by the secular centrist Partai NasDem (National Democrat) which has 59 seats in the current Parliament.

 

While Yenny’s swains thought she had the youth ratings, in the end, they feared her liberal values.  So Prabowo selected outgoing President Joko (Jokowi) Widodo’s eldest son Gibran Rakabuming Raka, 36.

 

Ganjar Prabono (from Mega’s Democratic Party of Struggle - PDIP) went for former Constitutional Court justice Mohammad Mahfud Mahmodin while Anies picked Muhaimin Iskandar, the deputy house speaker but more importantly religiously close to Yenny’s late father through the NU Islamic organisation.

 

Though not so near as his daughter.  

 

 First published in Pearls & Irritations, 18 December 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/equality-is-risky-best-stay-with-blokes/

 

 

 

 

SERVING COUNTRY - OR SERVING SELF?

 INDONESIANS EMBRACE DEMOCRACY - BUT DO ITS LEADERS?   

Prabowo, Anies, Ganjar.   Source: Straits Times

                           

More Indonesians than Americans are likely to vote in key presidential elections next year. But Australia is focusing on distant North America, not adjacent Southeast Asia, the zone where the Titans could clash.

 

India is the world’s largest democracy - population 1.3 billion. It’s growing so fast that it will soon overtake one-party China. Far down in second place comes the US with 332 million and heading for ‘demographic shrinkage’.

 

 In the 2020 election, 160 million Americans voted - that’s under 67 per cent of the eligible. The US sees itself as a champion of democracy, starting in the 1630s.

 

The Republic of Indonesia (RI) with 275 million is the world’s third-largest democracy since second president Soeharto quit in 1998 after 32 years of ruthless one-party rule.

 

In the 2019 election more than 158 million registered Indonesian voters fronted ballot boxes - that’s 82 per cent. Voting is voluntary. 

 

 If this participation trend continues Indonesia could overtake the US to be the second-largest democracy measured by committed voters.

 

There’ll be elections in the US and RI next year. The Western media is focusing on the distant race to the Washington White House, not the Jakarta Palace, though what happens next door could be critical for Australia.

 

Indonesian voters have embraced their rights only to be let down by leaders creating a ‘flawed democracy’ according to the Economist Intelligence Unit; nations in this group fail on pluralism, civil liberties, press freedom and political culture.

 

A major problem for Indonesia is ‘the stunted development of a clearly identifiable party opposition’. Small parties form strange coalitions with once bitter opponents, negating their ability to criticise.

 

Indonesians joke bitterly that their representatives’ principles are 5D - datang, duduk, diam, dapat duit - they come, sit down, shut up - and get paid.

 

Such cynicism would dissipate should members of the 575-strong  Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Republik Indonesia, (DPR - House of Representatives) - demonstrate altruism, a hope not confined to this nation.

 

The present president Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo was elected for a five-year term in 2014 and again in 2019. Attempts to get another stay failed in the courts.

 

Overall he’s done a reasonable job, particularly with infrastructure, health insurance, thumping terrorism and helping the poor. Reuters reported his approval rating recently hit an all-time high of 76.2 per cent, but this has more to do with personality than policy.

Source:  Jakarta Post

 

Slim Jokowi (left) is the archetypal laid-back nationalistic Javanese, mildly Islamic with a mix of traditional faiths. Politically he’s socialist favouring state-owned enterprises, emotionally controlled and deliberately ambiguous in his pronouncements.

 

 He came from a poor riverbank family with no ties to the military or Jakarta elite but has now created a dynasty with his three children in politics. What he hasn’t done is focus on the intangibles.

 

A report by two Australian academics, claims that: ‘The quality of Indonesian democracy has noticeably declined as the country continues to struggle with challenges to its democratic institutions and values, with systemic corruption and discrimination and violence against minority groups.’

 

The big ballot will be on 14 February. At this stage, it looks like a three-way punch-up between Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo, former Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan and Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto.

 

If there’s no overall majority, there’ll be a run-off between the top two, probably Ganjar and Prabowo. 

 

Australian academic Tim Lindsey writes that politicians ‘getting and maintaining power … is absolutely a domestic issue – because Indonesians look inwards.’

 

Ganjar is backed by the centre-left Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). The name is a misnomer. It’s the fiefdom of Megawati Soekarnoputri, 76, daughter of founding president Soekarno who died in 1971.

 

British Council research showed 52 per cent of Indonesia’s population ‘consists of young people between ages 18 and 39 years old, spanning both Millennial and Gen Z generations; Indonesia’s youth will shape the nation’s future.’

 

On paper, this looks like Anies’ mob. The 54-year-old has a PhD from the US and before entering politics was a university rector. He was handpicked by Jokowi as Education Minister, a job he held for less than two years, then sacked - apparently for being incandescent among dullards and proposing reforms reckoned too radical.

 

Ganjar has no international profile. His politics are domestic. As only the minority elite worry about foreign affairs, he plays on being Jokowi 2.

 

That means maintaining plans on shifting the capital Jakarta to East Kalimantan on the island of Borneo and building more toll roads and ports.

 

Human rights were never in Jokowi’s bag and absent from Ganjar’s - not through ideology but indifference. Intangibles don’t win votes in Indonesia.

 

Certainly not with Prabowo whose record as Special Forces Commander last century crushing dissent includes allegations of kidnapping and killing that should have had him on trial.

 

Instead, he’s back in with a chance thanks to being given a ministry by his opponent Jokowi and bankrolled by his dollar-billionaire brother Hashim Djojohadikusumo. He chairs his political creation - Gerindra (Great Indonesia Party), with the stomp of Trump’s MAGA movement in every Mussolini-style parade.

 

Prabowo appeals to the hard right, relics of the Soeharto era, content for the military to fix all problems so citizens needn’t bother with complex social ills. 

 

 During the 1983-85 military clean-up Petrus (penembak misterius mysterious shooter) campaign, citizens woke to find the bullet-shredded corpses of real or imagined criminals left in their streets. One estimate puts the slaughter above 10,000.

 

No arrests, courts, defence lawyers and all that rule-of-law namby-pamby. One US academic called Petrus ‘prophylactic murder’.

 

Prabowo wants the army, which used to control the police, to expand its power domestically.

 

If Indonesia reverts to a brutal autocracy the impact on trade, investment, security and defence planning would be damaging, hastening the turn back to the Anglosphere and farewell Julia Gillard’s Asian Century. That’s if it hasn’t left Australian air space already.

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 18 May 2023:

https://johnmenadue.com/indonesians-embrace-democracy-but-do-its-leaders/

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