Yunus, was assaulted as he rode his motorbike home. Assailants threw acid at him, leaving him with excruciating burns. Mr Prabowo denounced the attack, and a military court on April 30th charged four officers in the military intelligence agency with perpetrating it. That episode, in turn, brought back memories of Mr Prabowo’s own chequered past. As head of a commando unit under Suharto, who was his father-in-law, Mr Prabowo kidnapped dozens of activists protesting against the regime. After Suharto’s downfall in 1998 Mr Prabowo divorced the ex- dictator’s daughter and owned up to his role in the abductions. He said, however, that he had just been following orders and had released unharmed all those whom he had detained, even though about a dozen activists who had disappeared at the time were never heard from again. A military panel, convened by the reformist government which succeeded Suharto’s, dismissed Mr Prabowo from the armed forces, but he avoided further punishment. Critics argue that Mr Prabowo wants to take Indonesia back to Suharto’s “New Order”, reversing the democratic reforms of the past 28 years. They point in particular to Mr Prabowo’s long-standing ambition to abolish direct elections for provincial governors, mayors and regents (the chief administrators of Indonesia’s 416 counties), allowing local assemblies to elect local leaders instead. Direct elections, he says, are expensive and lead to corruption. His detractors, however, worry that he wants eventually to eliminate direct elections for president, leaving the job to parliament, as in Suharto’s day. That would allow Mr Prabowo to skate to a second term with a nod from his huge coalition.
Mr Prabowo’s defenders insist that he is not a carbon copy of Suharto. Despite coming of age under the New Order, he has adapted to the rowdy democracy that Indonesia has become, and to the give-and-take that comes with it. After losing two presidential elections to Joko Widodo, his predecessor and bitter rival, he agreed in 2019 to serve as defence minister under Jokowi, as the former president is universally known. When he at last won the presidency in 2024, he did so with Jokowi’s son as his running- mate. At any rate, Mr Prabowo has shied away from some authoritarian steps in his 18 months in office. When protests against corruption and police brutality paralysed dozens of cities last year, with some rioting and looting, advisers urged him to declare martial law. Mr Prabowo refused, relying instead on civilian law enforcement and the courts. Police arrested thousands of protesters, but later released nearly all of them. And the amendments to the armed-forces law that have caused so much angst among activists were not nearly as far-reaching as many feared. Evan Laksmana of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a British think-tank, says they were mostly intended to keep the bloated army busy. Some of Mr Prabowo’s policies are perfectly sensible. Natural-resource concessions have often been handed out or managed corruptly. Reviewing
them is a fine idea, as long as it is done impartially. He is also keen to close underperforming SOEs—another long-shirked task. Optimists argue that Mr Prabowo is driven less by a desire to restore the dictatorship of Suharto than by a quest to redeem his own reputation. In 1998 he was jockeying to succeed his father-in-law as president before his eventual dismissal from the armed forces. He spent years in self-imposed exile in Jordan, licking his wounds, before returning to Indonesia to re-enter politics. His ascent to the presidency crowns a 25-year slog for rehabilitation. He will not want to throw all that away. Mr Prabowo’s admirers say he has less in common with Suharto than with the man whom Suharto supplanted: Indonesia’s charismatic founding president, Sukarno. Mr Prabowo’s focus on governing not by diktat but by cajoling the elite into a consensus is reminiscent of what Sukarno called “guided democracy”. Mr Prabowo’s cabinet of more than 100 ministers is the biggest since Sukarno’s day and reflects the same intention: to co-opt as many parties as possible. Mr Prabowo even dresses and speaks like the founding father. It may simply be that Mr Prabowo’s dark past is prompting potential critics to fall in line without any need for Suharto-like coercion. Indonesia had already become a less liberal place under Jokowi. Although his cheery demeanour made him seem more democratic, his administration eroded checks and balances, allowed corruption to flourish and politicised law enforcement. An acid attack in 2017 on an official from an anti-corruption agency at the hands of two police officers bore similarities to the attack against Mr Andrie.
Whatever Mr Prabowo’s intentions, dangers loom. One is that fiscal profligacy further undermines confidence among foreign investors. As it is, they have gradually been withdrawing capital throughout Mr Prabowo’s tenure (see chart). Mr Prabowo’s tirades against local tycoons might also backfire, prompting them to stash their cash in Singapore rather than invest. The rupiah has sunk by 11% against the dollar during his time in office, to a record low. A credit downgrade would push up borrowing costs and pull the rupiah down further. That could instigate a downward spiral of the sort that ultimately cost Suharto the presidency. Another risk is that stifled opposition finds an outlet on the streets. Last August’s riots began when an armoured police van killed a food-delivery motorcyclist weaving his way through a protest against corruption. As in 1998, the unrest was fuelled by lay-offs, inflation and other economic woes. Mr Prabowo’s attempt to butter up his American counterpart, Donald Trump, by offering to send 8,000 peacekeepers to Gaza also risks alienating a public that is staunchly pro-Palestinian. (Mr Prabowo says the deployment is on hold.) Mr Prabowo’s government is storing up problems that both Sukarno and Suharto would have struggled to contain. ■ For exclusive coverage of Asian politics, economics and security, sign up to Asia Bulletin, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.
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