COMING OUR WAY? THE YEAR OF THE HEADLESS CHOOK

 Stranger danger? The neighbour we know nowt about

Credit:  Detik.com

He’s an enigma and a tease, a knotty man difficult for outsiders to unravel.

Just when rationalists thought Indonesian politics couldn’t get tangled further,  President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo has made yet another seemingly loopy decision - though that’s a Westerner’s analysis, empty of local cultural reasoning.   

He’s given the critical job of coordinating intel services to the Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto, 71, who’s pitching to be president at next year’s 14 February election.  The promotion gives him access to international spy secrets and even greater prominence in the media.

It seems to have worked.  Prabowo’s Gerindra  (Great Indonesia Movement Party)  has leapfrogged to second place in the latest reliable poll of voters, though still far behind Jokowi’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle ( PDI-P in Indonesian terms.)

This will be the disgraced former three-star general’s third charge at the most powerful position in Southeast Asia.  Prabowo (as he’s known) is Indonesia’s version of Donald Trump, albeit better educated and intelligent, making him more dangerous. On the publicly-available evidence (he hasn’t responded to requests for an interview) he comes across as a volatile paranoid narcissist.

He denied he’d lost the 2019 election when the official results had him ten points behind.  As noted on this website his supporters rioted in Jakarta.  Eight were killed and more than 700 injured.

He challenged the result in the Constitutional Court and lost.  Jokowi became president and then made his furious rival the Defence Minister.  This role gave him the power to negotiate arms deals overseas before Covid curbed flights, but also a platform in domestic politics.

Prabowo’s latest appeal to nostalgic electors seeking a toughie at the top is wanting army commands installed in Kalimantan province (Borneo) because ‘the natural resources of these regions (are) vulnerable to being stolen by other parties’.  As usual when whistling dogs, the real or imagined poachers haven’t been named.

Prabowo was a US-trained soldier who accelerated his career by marrying Titiek the daughter of second president Soeharto.  But even these contacts couldn’t stop  his dishonourable discharge for ‘misinterpreting orders’  during the 1998 chaos following his father-in-law’s resignation.

Prabowo’s international downfall was also linked to allegations of atrocities committed by troops he’d led in East Timor and Papua.  For a while he was banned from the US because of alleged human rights violations.

His marriage fractured and he fled to exile in Jordan .Helped by his billionaire businessman brother Hashim Djojohadikusoemo he returned to build Gerindra as the vehicle for his born-to-rule ambitions.

Not Benito in the 1930s - but Prabowo in the 2010s   Credit SCMP

Before Prabowo’s second stab at the presidency in 2019, award-winning  US journalist  Allan Nairn, who’d covered fighting in East Timor and been bashed by soldiers, said he’d seen plans to stage mass arrests of political opponents and restore the army’s leadership role it held under Soeharto should Prabowo win.  The timing of the story made it suspect.

Prabowo has one son Didit Hediprasetyo, a fashion designer and socialite who lives in Germany.  Indonesian social media commentators sometimes daringly suggest that he’s gay though this could be a fabrication to discredit his ultra-macho Dad.

In Australia such scuttlebutt would damn this columnist for turning tabloid. However it’s relevant in Indonesian politics. A wave of LGBT hate sponsored by faith groups has been sweeping the nation and will be an issue in the campaign.

The nation’s foremost  Islamic authority the Majelis Ulama Indonesia (Islamic scholars) has issued a fatwa (religious edict) stating ‘sexual orientation towards the same sex is a disorder that must be cured.’  Churches are also into vilification.

In Indonesia the marriage equality debate has nothing to do with same sex bonding..  It means the prohibition of interfaith weddings - an issue distressing those who thought their country supported tolerance.

Prabowo is in a fix; if he bangs the deviancy drum too hard Didit or his mates might speak out.To ignore means getting offside with the moral panic. The present plan seems to pump xenophobia rather than homophobia.  This is ironic because suave Prabowo is comfy with the foreigners that he tells the mob to mistrust.

Jokowi can’t stand again as the Constitution confines the position to two five-year terms. So who does he favour as his successor?

The President has told supporters to consider candidates whose hair had turned white from caring ‘so much about the people.’  This has been interpreted as an endorsement of Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo, 54, who’s with the PDI-P.  Unlike many ageing politicians he doesn’t use hair dye.

Late last year Jokowi spoke at a public function:  ‘I won two presidential elections. Apologies, Pak (Mr) Prabowo. It looks like it’s Prabowo’s turn after this.’ 

Dissembling makes sense to those deep in Javanese culture. German-born Jesuit philosopher  Dr Franz Magnis-Suseno author of Javanese Ethics and World View stresses that the Javanese value rukun (harmony), ‘to prevent the development of conflict-engendering emotions … The open expression of feelings is considered extremely bad taste.’   

Incumbent and aspirant are both Javanese, though wide apart. Slim Jokowi, 61, always elegant in batik, is an archetypal low-key traditional  poor-lad-makes good.  He was raised on a riverbank in a rented shack.  Dad Noto Mihardjo was a chippie.

Plump Prabowo favours safari suits. He’s from a rich distinguished family with revolutionary credentials. Schooled in London he speaks fluent English.  Papa Soemitro Djojohadikoesoemo was a minister and economist who studied in the Netherlands.

 

‘Conflict-avoidance’ and ‘harmony’ are not terms even hagiographers would link to Prabowo.  How that marries with Javanese ethics is another mystery to the unanointed, but the culture is hierarchical, giving the elite leniencies denied to the wee folk.

The left-right, socialist-capitalist divides that help Australians get a grip  on politics are absent in Indonesia where nationalism and religion infiltrate all debates..  There’s little disagreement among the parties on economic,social and security issues. Vote buying is widespread.  

The game of politics is played through personalities, not policies.

Should Prabowo win, our she’ll-be-right policies for dealing with Jakarta for the past two decades will be sent for recycling.  In Canberra it will be the Year of the Headless Chook.

 First published in Michael West Media 12 February 2023: https://michaelwest.com.au/stranger-danger-indonesias-next-president-could-be-a-threat/

A CANDIDATE LACKING GRAVITAS

The Right Stuff for Captain Indonesia?                                        

Indonesia’s electoral system differs from Australia’s. Presidential hopefuls didn’t seek Legislative Assembly (DPR) seats at the 9 April election - they’ll be facing the people in a direct vote on 9 July. However their parties’ performances are a useful weather vane. Duncan Graham writes from East Java:

There was something unsettling about presidential aspirant Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo’s performance on Metro TV last week.

The Jakarta Governor looked tired but good naturedly deflected questions about a vice presidential partner following the DPR elections.  The unofficial ‘quick count’ results have given his Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), prime position at just under 19 per cent, though way below predictions.

Also on the talk show were former vice president and business tycoon Jusuf Kalla, Minister for State Owned Enterprises and major newspaper chain owner Dahlan Iskan, and Jakarta deputy governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok), a political rival.

Earlier there’d been a one-sided embrace between Surya Paloh, the owner of Metro TV and head of the National Democratic Party (NasDem), and a squirming Jokowi; it looked like a white pointer nuzzling a seal.

Powerful men all and keen to ride pillion on Jokowi’s bike, but this was a sideshow.  Absent were the two giants who want the top job.  (The current incumbent, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, known as SBY, has served two five-year terms and is constitutionally barred from standing.)

Apart from Jokowi the major contestants are Aburizal Bakrie, corporate tsar and head of Golkar, which ran second with 14.4 per cent, and former general Prabowo Subianto, who heads Gerindra. This came third with 11.9 per cent.  

Both men are zillionaires, relics of the 32-year Soeharto era of crony capitalism and authoritarian control, desperate to get into the Presidential palace.   

In the next three months Jokowi, who owned a small-town furniture factory, not a media conglomerate in the capital, will be going head-to-head with candidates who don’t have ‘lose’ in their lexicons.

These men radiate power at Strontium 90 levels. Should either win the move would be horizontal, just stepping out of one grand office into another. The new uniform would fit their stout forms without tailoring.

When slim Jokowi left Metro’s studio for another function, he walked alone through the audience; just an ordinary bloke, not an Alpha male who expects quaking respect as his right.

All fine and egalitarian. But absent was the gravitas, any hint he has the Right Stuff.

Being the battlers’ mate with his meet-the-people blusukan walkabouts as Governor of the nation’s capital for the past 18 months has given Jokowi profile, but those days are surely over.   Despite having ‘democracy’ in its title the PDI-P is the fiefdom of first president Soekarno’s daughter Megawati. Now Jokowi must break free from her matronage, to move on. That means up and away.

In 2006 Bakrie was faced with overwhelming expert evidence that his company’s East Java gas well had caused the world’s biggest mud volcano, displacing 40,000 citizens.

Then other geologists arrived who blamed natural causes. And the courts agreed. 

When outraged victims marched to Jakarta demanding compensation their outspoken leader suddenly appeared on a Bakrie TV station, tearfully withdrawing his statements and apologising for insulting the big man’s family.

In 2010 the Bakrie Group went into a coal deal with prominent London financier Nat Rothschild. The partnership soured, both sides lost but the Bakries appear to have bested the British financial establishment.

Prabowo, once Soeharto’s son-in-law has an impeccable born-to-rule pedigree; his grandfather played a key role in establishing the nation, and his father was a leading economist.

As a Kopassus commander Prabowo fought in East Timor and later led a hostage rescue operation in Papua. If his vaulting ambition hadn’t over-leaped during the 1998 fall of Soeharto he’d probably be considered a national hero.

After being discharged from the military for ‘misinterpreting orders’ regarding the alleged kidnapping and torture of activists he fled to exile in Jordan.

 He returned later and got into business – then politics.  He was Megawati’s running partner in the 2009 election. When that bid failed he started Gerindra (Great Indonesia Movement) which he runs in the style of Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Prabowo has been blacklisted by the US for alleged human rights abuses, but who cares?  Not the Gerindra voters in the DPR election who reckon the nation of 240 million needs Captain Indonesia to keep control.

Though few articulate their concerns out loud, the concern is that Jokowi won’t last the distance, that his campaign could falter in a real or contrived crisis requiring a tough guy to ‘rescue’ democracy.

The 9 April election went brilliantly, though the Golput (no show) response was worryingly high at an estimated 34 per cent abstainers. The campaign was mainly benign, more often marked by humour than venom. But that wasn’t the grand event.

Security has been boosted at Megawati’s insistence, but Jokowi still seems reluctant to abandon the accessibility that’s taken him so far.

First president Soekarno survived assassination attempts. He was also hugely popular with the people, but lost power when a failed coup d’état let the army take over.  

During the 1999 East Timor crisis the military used its standard blacks-ops tactic of arming ‘ninja’ militias to sow discord when third president Habibie had already agreed to a referendum.

Fourth president Gus Dur was ignored when he ordered Islamic militants to be stopped from sailing to the Moluccas where sectarian violence took the lives of 5,000. These three presidents were civilians.  Second president Soeharto and current president SBY were generals.

The Australian Defence Forces may not like its government’s asylum seeker turn-back policies, but no-one expects Tony Abbott’s orders to be disobeyed or his position slandered.

But this is Indonesia where the army has always seen its role differently, the protector of the nation’s sacred Unitary State principle from internal threats. That trumps the people’s will every time.

What authority could Jokowi, who has literally and metaphorically never worn camouflage, exercise over an army that does things its way?  Goodness, the man’s religious credentials are also in question: He’s reputed to be an abangan (nominal Muslim), and a pluralist.

Even if no-one primes a bomb or engineers sectarian strife, Jokowi can be neutered by relentless attacks highlighting his deficiencies while promoting his opponents’ proven merits There’ll be no lack of money – or will.

Many Indonesians, including SBY, openly believe in black magic. Expect a dark campaign with battalions of phantoms.

(First published 23 April 2014 in Our Indonesia Today.  I forget to include it on this blog at the time - but it's sadly looking a mite prophetic.)