Demonstrations and protests ripped across Indonesia over the past week. Rocks were thrown at riot police wielding tear gas and water cannon, regional parliaments and police headquarters were set on fire, and the houses of legislators, including that of Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, were targeted by looters, who were seen running off with designer handbags and even bathtubs.
The fury heightened after a video circulated of a 21-year-old motorcycle ride-hailing driver named Affan Kurniawan being hit by an armoured police vehicle, which rather than stopping then ran him over. Affan later died of his injuries in a Jakarta hospital.
The cause of the rage? The protests initially started outside the national parliament in Jakarta after reports that the country’s MPs had granted themselves a huge monthly housing allowance on top of their salaries. Coming at a time when a shrinking middle class is facing a cost-of-living crisis, youth unemployment is more than 16 per cent and the effects of President Prabowo Subianto’s populist policies that are meant to help the poor have not been fully felt, this lit the fire of anger against elites.
The latter, in the popular imagination, most certainly includes MPs, some of whom did not help their image by being filmed dancing in parliament after receiving these new perks, which also included a monthly rice allowance.
The streets are calm for now, but several people have died in what has been the worst violence the country has seen since the late 1990s. Indonesia has always been beset by terrible inequality. The advent of social media has only served to make the extravagances of the wealthy all the more obvious to those earning an average monthly wage of $400. Their discontent is an urgent challenge for Mr Prabowo – who, to his credit, acted decisively once the scale of the uproar became clear.
Last Friday, the day after Affan died, the President visited the family home to offer his personal condolences. Photos and film of Mr Prabowo hugging the young delivery driver’s parents, who were crying as he attempted to comfort them, were powerful and moving images of the former special forces general who has transformed himself into a kind of patriarch, by turns grandfatherly and stern, of the nation.
On Sunday, he gave a televised address in which he said the MPs’ perks – including the housing allowance – would be scrapped. While instructing the military and police to take firm action against arsonists and looters, he ordered an investigation into Affan’s death, and seven officers have been detained.
By Tuesday, the current situation was considered stable enough for Mr Prabowo to fly to China; having cancelled his participation at the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation gathering over last weekend, he arrived in Beijing in time for the Victory Day military parade on Wednesday morning.
Some may question the importance of these events. After all, demonstrations and protests are common in many South-East Asian countries, and the reported fatalities, while tragic, were confined to the single digits. But deadly riots have a special significance in Indonesia.
When commentators make comparisons to the late 90s, they are referring to the mass violence and civil unrest of 1998, which led to the resignation of then-president Suharto and the downfall of his New Order establishment that had been in power for 32 years. In a perceptive analysis, the veteran Malaysian journalist Wong Chun Wai wrote this week that protests in neighbouring Malaysia tend to be “a carefully negotiated message” from a majority middle class that doesn’t really want to rock the boat. In Indonesia, however, they are a “battle cry” that “have often carried the weight of national transformation”.
The Jakarta Post made the link explicit in an article titled “Not a ’98 repeat” on Monday. The editorial board commended Mr Prabowo’s Sunday address for having “struck several correct notes”.
“He pledged respect for peaceful protest, cited international human rights conventions and openly condemned excessive police force,” they wrote. Noting that legislators had been rebuked for making arrogant statements about the riots, that the perks had been revoked, and that “wasteful overseas junkets” would also not be allowed, they said that the President had “also offered something rare in Indonesian politics: accountability”.
Going forward, however, Mr Prabowo has a lot that the country needs him to deliver while he must simultaneously negotiate a tricky balancing act. He is personally popular, enjoying approval ratings of 81 per cent, according to one survey in May. Legislators and elites are not. Anger at MPs has not so far transferred itself to the President, although insulating himself against a body in which his administration has a vast majority – and so can shape the order of business – may be a challenge.
Moreover, Mr Prabowo comes from an elite background himself. His father served as a minister under both Indonesia’s first two presidents, Sukarno and Suharto – the latter of whom was once his father-in-law (Mr Prabowo separated from Suharto’s daughter in 1998) – and his brother is a very wealthy businessman.
But by 2024, during his third – and ultimately victorious – run for the presidency, Mr Prabowo successfully projected an image of himself as a great uncle or grandfather of the nation, as I noted above. His confident ease with members of the public from all walks of life and winsome videos with his cats earned him a commanding 59 per cent of the vote against two rival candidates.
A president in such a situation can still distance himself from unpopular elites and legislators; indeed, Mr Prabowo did exactly that in his speech last Sunday. But there are many nettles he will have to grasp – including to tackle the country’s endemic corruption, institute any number of reforms and slash the “benefits” to which many officials and businessmen feel entitled – in order to deliver for the ordinary Indonesians who voted for him.
In his televised address, Mr Prabowo said that his government is “determined to always fight for the people’s interests, including those of the most vulnerable and marginalised”. Many of those showed their frustration and desperation last week. Bringing them back from the brink and making all Indonesians feel they have a share of the country’s economic growth will be a battle – and one perhaps harder than any Mr Prabowo faced in his years at the top of the military.
