Indonesia under Prabowo—promises, protests, and power

The EAR to Asia podcast is made available on the Jakarta Post platform under agreement between the Jakarta Post and the University of Melbourne. Hello, I'm Sami Shah, and this is EAR to Asia. The inherent instability of the Trump administration has seen probable pivot quite strongly towards China and Russia, and in some respects, you know, I think politically it may feel more at home there, in terms of more broadly authoritarian systems, he's often spoken very glowingly of China's success. Interestingly, it plays into a wider approach that Prabowo has taken, the sort of re-securitisation of Indonesian public life. I think the fear that everybody has is a returning to this to heart and you order dual function to e-function the model whereby the Army was a key partner in government. It hasn't happened, but the way forward is much clearer and is legally legitimised. In this episode, Indonesia under Prabowo promises protests and power. The EAR to Asia is the podcast from Asia Institute, the Asia Research Specialist at the University of Melbourne. A year into its presidency and Prabowo Subianto stands at a pivotal moment in Indonesia's political journey. Elected on a promise of both continuity and change, he pledged bold growth targets and ambitious social programmes all while signalling a steady hand after the jikou years. But how much of that vision has translated into reality? That gots have reshaped ministries, protests and unrest have shaken the streets, a long-serving finance minister has been dismissed, and questions linger about whether Prabowo is reinforcing Indonesia's democratic institutions, or quietly reviving old habits of military and elite dominance. At the same time, Indonesia's foreign policy is evolving, membership in BRICS places Jakarta more firmly on the global stage, while trade tensions with Washington and a shifting balance in Asia tests its long-standing strategy of multi-alignment. And as the world's fourth most popular country weighs its place in a post-US-dominated order, Prabowo's choices will shape not only his legacy but Indonesia's role in global governance. So what does the first year of this new presidency reveal about Indonesia's political direction? How resilient is its democracy under Prabowo's leadership? And what kind of regional and global power is Indonesia positioning itself to become? For comment, we are joined by regular AID Asia guests, Professor Tim Lindsay, the Malcolm Smith Professor of Asian Law and Director of the Center for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society at the Melbourne Law School, and Dr. Ian Wilson, a political sociologist of Indonesia, and a senior lecturer at the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Murdock University. Welcome back, Tim and Ian. Let's give it a bit of a broad brush first. About a year has gone by since Prabowo's will be on to assume the presidency. Is he already making his mark on Indonesia? Ian, let's start with you. Well the short answer would be yes, though perhaps not in the way he may have hoped. It's been a tumultuous first year. We've had significant protests. There's been the most recent ones, but there were ones earlier in the year as well. He's promised to deliver a highly ambitious 8% growth, he's been faltering somewhat. And the protests in many respects were underpinned by a young population who just aren't finding decent paid jobs against a high cost of living. At the same time, he's been trying to consolidate his massive coalition of everybody, which has meant divvying out positions. He increased the size of government significantly in part to capture this broad coalition. And many have argued that this has made it from the start quite unwieldy and quite ineffective in terms of delivering on some of the big signature policies that he campaigned on. In particular, his nutritious meals program, which is meant to deliver daily nutritious meals to school-aged children throughout the country. That's been fraught with a whole range of difficulties. Most recently, you know, large numbers of poisoning. There was up to 7,000 children who've had food poisoning as a result of food. So he's had a lot of challenges on the domestic front and been very keen to consolidate some public legitimacy. But a lot of these issues, I think, have made that quite difficult for him to date. Dem, what shift, if any, are we seeing away from the previous jokoui era of policy and politics? Yes. It's really important at the start of Praboa's election campaign to secure jokoui's huge block of voters, jokoui, the previous president. That's less important to now having won the election by parachuting in jokoui's son Gibran Raka booming as his vice presidential candidate. And while he therefore promised to continue jokoui's policies, we've seen him now clearly moving away from a commitment to those policies. While we've focused on huge infrastructure projects, including, of course, the national capital, a focus on an appearance, at least, of investor-friendly policies, pretty cautious economic policy, a limited bit strategic subsidies and services for the poor. And what we're seeing now at Praboa is, of course, a move away from the national capital, which is increasingly looking abandoned in the forests of Borneo. We could say a bit more about that later, if you like. And instead, expensive populist policies, the free meals program that Ian's just mentioned, food estates being set up with military involvement to try and provide food supplies and so forth, but also controversially a massive new sovereign wealth fund called Danantara, which is actually a consolidation of state owned enterprises, pretty much directly under the presence of authority with figures from the inner circle and prominent leadership positions. In fact, what this does is take huge slabs out of the state budget, put it off record, if you like, and directly under the President's control. This has obvious potential to create a major slush fund or opportunities for leak corruption and patronage, or at the very least to significantly reduce transparency and accountability of state expenditure. And I think what's happened with the Minister of Finance, 3 Muliani, the former Minister of Finance, is a good example of this drift away from Jokowi's platform. She, of course, was a long-serving, pretty much rusted on finance, her records are actually pretty amazing. She was Finance Minister under President Susila Mamma Yudayano from 2005 to 2010, and I'm managing director of the World Bank. And then back again, as Finance Minister for the whole of Jokowi's 10 years. And then still there, with Prabowo, from last year until the 8th of September. She was the first Finance Minister to serve under 3 Presidents, and this made her a really important sign of continuity because she was internationally respected as a prudent, cautious technocrat, Stockman loved her. But she had openly criticized Prabowo's populist policies, while Jokowi was still in office. And many believe Shri Muliani was not keen to be part of Prabowo's populist agenda, as it would force her to front policies she didn't believe in. But she was obviously put under massive pressure to stay in the job, and she did. And this meant that her home was targeted in the recent riots because she'd become the face of policies that many think she didn't agree with, but which she was obliged to front. And those policies, instead of creating a huge hardship for many, because funding these projects, such as the free meals and Dan and Tara, that will fund and so on, have resulted in huge cuts to education, health and other services that are biting very hard at the declining middle class and the growing poor. So she became a target, aggravated by her self-evidently quick statements that higher tax revenue levels were required, Indonesia's one of the lowest levels of tax compliance. Obviously the Asia just ran 10% so her house was sacked in the riots. And it looks as if Prabowo took the opportunity to scapegoat her and sack her replacing her with another minister to put it by her. So I think that stands as a symbol of how Prabowo's populist agenda is taking over policymaking in the government, detaching it from the platforms and approach of Jokowi that he was meant to be continuing. So she's a perfect example then of the next question that I was going to ask, which is what to remain the same. Prabowo's campaign's platform was one of continuity as well, what has remained continuous? Well I think one of the key aspects of Jokowi's management of power was the creation, again as Ian said, of a huge coalition that allowed Jokowi, the previous president, to dominate the legislature. Now what Prabowo has done is taken that to the next level. So he has an almost complete, completely dominant coalition, a super coalition now of which means there's almost no opposition in the legislature any longer. Theoretically when the largest party's mega parties, PDIP, is not in the coalition but it has publicly stated that it will support the government's policy so it's hardly an opposition either. I think we can say that mega parties, PDIP, whilst not in the coalition is in de facto member of it. And so that means there is no real opposition and indeed no real discussion about policy in the legislature. With that over 100 member cabinet, about half of the ministers and half of the vice ministers, the real issues are just intra-allied squabbles about who gets access to which particular set of resources rather than debates about policy. So that's continued but up to the next level. Ian, what challenges does Prabowo face then and putting forward his agenda other than the reaction from the public? Well, I mean, the big populist policies and, again, the New Degis meals program is probably the best example to use requires a degree of logistics that requires a high level of competence at all different levels of government to deliver program effectively. And that's going to be a challenge when he has an approach towards governing, which is about keeping everyone inside the tent. And it's probably worth maybe briefly just revisiting sort of Prabowo's political vision in the context of discussions of continuity with Jockewe is that Prabowo has a very conservative within the context of Indonesian political thought view of Indonesian democracy. He's openly hostile to the idea of liberal democracy, of oppositional forms of democracy. And really has what many have referred to as an integralist view, that everything that the state is an organic whole and the interests of different states and groups are inseparable. Now, when it comes to the practicalities of ruling this approach, ideological approach has a lot of challenges because how do you manage having everyone inside the tent, particularly when everyone wants a piece of the pie and so issues around corruption and collusion. And there's been a lot of commentaries, certainly a few months ago from business and industry in Indonesia saying that they'd notice or experience an uptick in attempts at extortion, despite the usual characters such as gangsters and criminal elements, but also from the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce. It was a very well a controversial case of video recordings of Indonesian Chamber of Commerce, officials basically trying to extort huge amounts of money from foreign investors. To return to your question, the problem that he has is of managing this huge, unruly tent in which he wants to include everyone because he doesn't want opposition and there's two ways you can approach that. One is you co-op to everyone and that's his preferred model. And the second is that when those are going to be recalculation outside, they may be criminalized or dealt with in other kinds of ways. But when it comes to the functionality and the practicalities of ruling and governing and delivering on promises, I think this approach to governments, you've seen this clash between this ideological view that he has and it was very one that kind of crystallized during the new order. He brings in, as some have mentioned, a 1990s view of how to govern Indonesia. But of course, it's 2025 now. And I think that's creating a lot of significant challenges and is likely to do so going forward as well. Yeah. And just so that, you know, I mean, it's his political party, Grindra, still has on its website as its number one objective being to return to the original 1945 constitution, which is the version of the constitution before the democratizing amendments were introduced between 1999 and 2002. And Prabhava has spoken openly about that being desirable. So his party platform and his own position is they need to return to the pre-democratic system. Now, whether he'll be able to do that or not is another question altogether, but it's still there as an objective. A Tim's previously mentioned the budget cuts to government ministries that the new administration has implemented, shifting funds to populist programs. What has been the impact so far than on the government itself and governance, Tim? Yeah. Look, one of Prabhava's key election promises was 8% GDP growth. Indonesia has been bumping along between 5% and 6% despite its own best efforts. In fact, it stuck there. And most economists said from the start, there's almost no chance that 8% being achieved. And actually, if anything, it's now likely the growth may slide from where it was under Jokowi, far from reaching 8%. This is because the huge cost of this school meals program has led to 8.5% cuts to the budget. Massive cuts. Efficiency, but now looking very much like austerity measures. Another 300 trillion of spending allocations in Jokowi's era have been cut to finance the nutritious meals program and the new sovereign wealth fund. And this is having a massive impact on the budgets leading to those cuts we described that is making things very difficult for the poor and the shrinking middle class. So this slashing of government services and social welfare programs and a collapse in spending is causing the economy to slowly grind down and with the growth falling about 0.8% in a recent quarter. So this is creating a really big problem because public services are going to have to be cut further to keep funding Prabhava's signature projects or something's going to give. This is a huge problem I think for the government now. The global press has been a wash with stories of nationwide protests and riots in Indonesia, particularly after what took place in Nepal recently. Can you run us down with what have been the consequences of these riots? We know what's behind them at this point, but what's been the outcome of any of them. Tim? Look, I don't think there's any doubt that the protests that took place are the result of a genuine outburst of long simmering grievances against the political elite. There were originally protests against the extraordinary decision of legislators to grant themselves enormous housing allowances of around about $4,700, which is extraordinary when the minimum wage in Chicago is just $500 a month. And then when a 21-year-old gig economy motorbike taxi driver, a fan of Kuroneoan, who wasn't involved in the protests, but just near them was run over and killed by a police vehicle. The protests against the greed of the legislators exploded into major protests, which were driven and guided by a whole range of what you call grassroots organisations, such as motorcycle taxi driver organisations and other groups like that, and then brought in technical college students and other student groups. And the reason why this was so explosive is that symbolism is so stark. A precarious gig economy worker struggling to support his family on tiny wages crushed by an armoured vehicle driven over him by the police, who has seen, I think, rightly as corrupt and oppressive agents of the political elite. And that encapsulated these problems, which is, instead, have been growing and growing protests under Jacobible under Prabowo as well. So that led to the explosion, and I think Ian can talk more about what the dynamics of that were. But I think the situation now is that Prabowo, having called protesters, well, accused protesters of committing treason and subversion and calling on the police to be determined, has started a crackdown. There have been thousands arrested and detained and just to be done to a thousand still in detention, including some leaders of NGO groups and activists, law reform activists and others. The question now, I think, is whether that crackdown continues and gets deeper or not? What remains to be seen? Ian, would you like to add anything? Yeah, sure. I think one of the interesting things about the most recent protests was that they began, as, you know, protests often do in Indonesia, they were led by university student organisations together with trade unions. But it was the actions of the police, you know, the death of a Funkenia one, but more generally their repressive response, that really was the match that said a light, a tinder box of kind of resentments and angers that have felt through, I think, vast swathes of Indonesian society and particularly young people, just, you know, going back to the earlier question about continuity and change, you know, that one thing of high continuity from the Jocque administration into the Prabowo administration is the kind of jobs that had been created. It's four out of five jobs over five or six years now that had been generated all in the informal sector and also the gig economy. So you have a whole generation of younger people who basically, often with college degrees, with university degrees who can't find stable employment and the resentments that are simmering there are immense. So you saw this explosion of anger around the country, coming from, you know, gig workers, online taxi drivers, people who occupy city streets, etc., young people who may be unemployed. There are large numbers of high school students as well and we see this in the recriminations that have come since that it's sort of a, I guess, a set piece in Indonesia when they're a large demonstration and some, you know, rioting as there was though, I think it's important to note that the property destruction was very targeted at targeted government buildings and targeted police stations. We didn't see the kind of looting that you've seen say in 1998, people have tried to make some comparisons there. But the government has been very keen to make it clear that there were, you know, there are architects of this that this, they don't want a narrative that this represented an explosion of a simmering resentment amongst large ways of the population, particularly young people. And so the arrests really identify a narrative that they want to construct that there were particular agents who provoked people towards property destruction and many of the arrests, for example, have claimed that these people are incited young people towards violence. So I think you see the government trying to construct a narrative around what happened. In some respects, I think a denial of reality that there is, and it's very generational, young people feeling really aggrieved, feeling that things aren't getting better. And of course, the triggers were seeing the ostentatious displays of wealth. One of the reactions to the riots was to say we have to have no more flexing, flexing being a term that's used for people in power, parliamentarians, et cetera, flaunting or displaying their wealth on social media, really a kind of a let them eat cake, kind of attitude. But yeah, in terms of the recriminations, we see these arrests which are trying to construct this idea that the riots and the large scale upheaval was the result of malicious actors. There's also been a large targeting of anarchist groups and anarchist networks with anarchism, kind of a sort of a set of ideas that's quite popular actually, particularly among teenagers. And that's something I think that the government is quite unsettled by. But you've also seen the instigation of new orderish type responses. We've seen the military call for the establishment of Pumswarkasa, which are civilian militias joining in patrols with the police and the military. You saw the Minister of Home Affairs issue a regulation requesting the re-instatement of Possess Cumbering, which a community-based policing sort of outpost or command station. So a sort of a re-instagating of new order type architectures of surveillance and control in response. Yeah, and that plays into, interestingly, it plays into a wider approach that Prabowo has taken, the sort of re-securitisation of Indonesian public life. Now, in fact, that really started under Djokowi with amendments to civil service law passed in 2023, which allows active members of the army and police to occupy civilian positions. And then there were further amendments under Prabowo and in March this year, which confirmed that civilian posts can be occupied by serving military members. And those laws also expanded the army's organisational structure with a whole lot of new military commands, almost one very, very province-doubling, or more, almost, I think, more than doubling with a hundred new battalions of 500 more, 37% increase for the forces. We've also seen former army buddy, senior military officers appointed into Cabinet, into the powerful, coordinating, minister of political and security affairs, defence ministry, old former buddy, also as a special adviser to the president and so on. So this is, I think, this is, again, continuity from Djokowi's era because Djokowi started this process, but it's increasing and accelerated and the response to the riots is going to facilitate that. And it's a step back towards reinstituting the new order territorial system under Suharta, by which the army shadowed the civil administration across the country, embedding military personnel and government institutions helped that regime consolidate control and suppress to sit. Now, we haven't quite got to that stage yet, but we certainly, now see a clear pathway through that has legal legitimacy and a formal structure for that to happen. And I think, as well as a crackdown on civil society that's already happened and they get more significant, I think these riots are going to usher in a pathway towards that re-securitisation. And I think the fear that everybody has is a returning to Suharta and you order dual function. Do we function, model, whereby the army was a key partner in government? As I said, that hasn't happened, but the way forward is much clearer and is legally legitimised. The last consequence from these riots that's worth pointing out is that in January, Probor's popularity was just about 80% according to polls. It's now down to 56%, so there's been a really significant drop in his popularity. Polls, as politicians famously say, come and go, but nonetheless, I think that is a significant indication of buyers regret from the millennials who played such a key role in electing Probor. You're listening to Ayr to Asia from Ayr to Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne. And just a reminder to listeners about Ayr to Asia Institute's online publication on Asia and Society's Politics and Cultures, it's called the Melbourne Asia Review. It's free to read and it's open access at MelbourneAsiaReview.edu.au. You'll find articles by some of our regular Ayr to Asia guests and by many others. Plus you can catch recent episodes of Ayr to Asia at the Melbourne Asia Review website, which again you can find at MelbourneAsiaReview.edu.au. I'm Sami Shah, and I'm joined by political sociologist, Ian Wilson, and Asian law professor Tim Lindsay. We're talking about what's going on in Indonesia one year into the presidency of Probor, Subianto. Ian Tim is just talked about the military and its role in the civilian government and its expanding, etc. What about the political elites in oligarchs? Are they safe under a Probor presidency? Yeah. Well, again, Probor's idea of governing is the integralist idea of having a big tent in which everyone's a part of it and to answer your question relatively succinctly, as long as you're inside the tent, then things are probably going to be fine for you. No one's going to stick their head up as being an opposition to Probor, and in so far as oligarchs and the kind of sources of big capital in Indonesia play along with his administration then they're likely to do quite well. And a lot of the big projects that he's proposed, for obvious reasons, a lot of focuses on the Nutricious Meals program, but there's been another, a number of other projects which he signaled interest in, such as the Great Sea Wall Project, which is building a significant sea wall to ostensibly protect Jakarta from rising sea levels and inundation. You know, this is something that's been signaled as a kind of a bit of a feeding frenzy for many of the big property developers and others. So he's had a couple of meetings where he's brought together some of the big oligarchs of Indonesia. Basically, you would assume to make sure that they're all roughly on the same page and to offer assurances of a kind that as long as they work together, they'll be able to do as they like. When it comes to political parties, we've seen a couple of interesting cases. We had the corruption cases against Tom Lembon, who's a former advisor to Jokowi during the Jokowi administration, and then he later was a supporter of the presidential campaign of Anis Busway done, and then also Hustle Cristiano, who's a senior figure in the PDIP. And Prabal, these both cases began under Jokowi, and Prabal, it was just I think a couple of months ago, commuted those cases. He intervened as president to basically end those corruption cases. And this was sort of read in a few different ways, one that he was trying to sort of distance himself from cases that were started during the Jokowi administration. But another was a signalling that as long as you stay on the same page as me, then everything will be fine. In the context where the KPK has been seen as being highly weaponized and used as the political instrument to sort of discipline those within political leads who were seen as becoming oppositional or antagonistic to the government. So he's seen as having a slightly different approach, perhaps to Jokowi, but nonetheless using the instruments of state to offer, you know, with both carrot and stick to oligarchs. And particularly his big projects, which of course are a contractor and a subcontract. There's a dream of all the money, that's state money that's there to be divvied out, but politically also offering some carrots. But with the well understood proviso that this is about being part of the team and not being oppositional. I just had a couple of points to that, I completely agree with that. And I think the law enforcement apparatus, prosecutors, police and anti-corruption commission the KPK were weaponized by Jokowi, still weaponized under Prabowo and no longer independent and can be used by whoever the powerholder is to pick off critics and enemies within the government because basically everyone's vulnerable to corruption charges. There's not where the someone's corrupt is, whether they're chosen as a target and that is a powerful weapon for the president to wield. The other one is that in the background, you have this growing tension between Jokowi and Prabowo, Jokowi who is a master strategist, but limited by two terms and can't be president. And he hoped to maintain his influence under Prabowo by parachuting his son Gibran Raka booming into the vice presidency. But it's becoming increasingly clear that there can't be two sons in the sky. And I think the political elite are riveted by how this background, the subtle background struggle between the former president, the current president will play out. It leads to a lot of instability in the political algorithm because everything is read in terms of the battle between the two sultans, if you want to put it in a sort of historical analogy, it's not an uncommon struggle in Indonesia. It's also very concerning, I think, for the elites because you have to remember Prabowo 77 and he's not well, he's not a physically well person. And if he was to die for whatever reason, then Jokowi's son Gibran would constitutionally step into the presidency, he's a former catering company head, he's accused of being a nippo baby and by his critics, he's parachuted into his father's old job as mayor of the city of Solo and then to the VP job. He's not respected by the elite, it would be expected that he would be a puppet of his father. So that creates this huge tension, a huge structural floor in the political arrangements now. Tim, you mentioned this earlier, so let's now get into it a little bit. Jokowi's big initiative was a relocation of the capital from Jakarta to Nusantara in Kalamantan. How has Prabowo handled the ongoing capital relocation project? It seems to be pretty absent from his recent speeches. Yes, indeed. I think Nusantara is proving to be the big miss that many observers predicted it would be when Jokowi decided it would be his major signature project. There's some big problems. It was meant to be funded through public private partnerships, but investors are very angry. I think there's widespread cynicism about whether it will ever come to food in the way Jokowi intended. So no major foreign investors or sovereign wealth funds have gone near it. Not Chinese or Arab investors have been courted. Jokowi did force some Indonesian oligarchs to put money in and return for licenses and concessions within Indonesia as a quid pro quo deal, but no one here enough. Now, Prabowo has heavily cut the budget for Nusantara despite making public commitments to it continuing. He's cut the budget along with the other projects to fund the Nutrition's Meals programme. And it's really hard to see how those cuts can ever be made good again, given the slumping growth and the diversion of funds from the budget to Danah and Tara and the Meals. And really, the underlying problem about this is there's an obvious pointlessness about the whole Nusantara project. Jakarta is the business and political centre of Indonesia. Nusantara is not a solution to Jakarta's dysfunction. Greater Jakarta is about 30 million people. It's one of the most polluted cities in the world and it is now the fastest sinking city in the world. With some parts going under it about 25 centimetres a year, creating a camera in the forests of Borneo for politicians who don't want to be there by taking land from local indigenous and other communities, even if it was funded and if it happened, even if a million or so people moved there which I doubt. None of that will do anything to resolve Jakarta's huge problems. The sinking, the pollution, the overpopulation, the infrastructure. And Nusantara will do nothing to improve life for the 28 or 29 billion people who would remain there anyway. And I think this sort of pointlessness is the underlying flaw in the whole project. I think what we're seeing now is Bravo, both by necessity, the budget necessity and probably by his own personal views, moving away steadily from the Nusantara project. In how is the new administration handling the US now under Donald Trump? And what's been the Trump effect, if you will, on Indonesia? Yeah, I think this has made a couple of things perhaps easier for Bravo in that he's pivoted despite Indonesia's sort of historical non-alignment approach to foreign policy that has pivoted quite strongly towards China and to Alessa extent Russia. And we've seen Indonesia join BRICS as an alternative bloc. But Trump's tariff initially in Indonesia was hit with 32%, then negotiated to 19%. But I think nonetheless, and this of course isn't exclusive to Indonesia, that the inherent instability of the Trump administration has seen Indonesia look to other partners who look far more reliable in China in particular. And of course there's been a heavy reliance on Chinese investment across the country. And often without the same kind of sets of obligations that the US might be seen to have been imposing. So I think in short, the Trump administration in terms of Prabal and in theory, they get a long fine, but I think the instability there has seen in Prabal pivot quite strongly towards China and Russia. And in some respects, I think politically made feel more at home there in terms of more broadly authoritarian systems. He's often spoken very glowingly of China's success and also very close to Russia and to President Putin. So I think that has seen, while non-alignment is still the official status quo in Indonesia, I do think that we've seen a pivot in that way. The way in which Indonesia handled the tariff negotiations with Trump says a bit about the way Prabal was administration operates, because Indonesia jumped in quite early into those negotiations. And it made a lot of concessions to win what it thought were favourable terms. And so it actually announced the deal before the tariffs took effect on the first of August. They were revealed on the first of August. So Indonesia made a whole lot of concessions to the US as part of those negotiations which had called it a huge win, but it ended up with the same rate as almost all the other states in the region, including ones that didn't negotiate and made no concessions at all. So now it finds itself with the same tariff as other states in the region, but with some really big concessions, abolishing tariffs for almost all US imports, and lifting non-cariff barriers on goods and services, including cell phones, vehicles, critical minerals, and allowing data flow of Indonesian data into the US, which is very controversial and concerning, as well as committing to all sorts of purchases, big, big budget purchases and agricultural energy and aircraft. So what that I think shows you is, I mean, I think that was a mishandled negotiation that has gone very badly in the end for Indonesia. And a lot of critics say that shows the sort of lack of experience in the administration and its tendency to rush at things and make some poor technocratic decisions. Now with the departure of Sri Moliani, again, the same sort of message is coming out that this isn't an inexperienced and unwieldy administration with this vast cabinet, but not making good technocratic decisions. Tim, can we then drill down into whether the newly enlarged bricks will deliver dividends to Indonesia enough to offset these reduced exports to the US? Well, I don't think joining bricks has got anything to do with the economic or trade deals really. Provoke was making arrangements like that in any case, as Ian said, China is an easier partner for Provoke to deal with. And he made China his first visit as president finalized about $10 billion in bilateral trade deals, including lithium battery, solar panels and so on. Jokowi was an England-focused president. Provoke was different. He likes to be described as a foreign policy president, but actually it's more that he wants to be seen as a global figure, strutting the global stage. That's really, I think, what Brics is about. It's part of the whole thing of Provoke turning up, trying to negotiate a settlement of the Ukraine-Russia war without success. That was when he was minister to defense and to Jokowi, or more recently turning out with the Chinese victory parade in Beijing. That's what he likes to do. It's not really about trade deals. That will happen anyway. And Provoke will keep trying to get an investment from China, because it's very difficult to get it from anywhere else at the moment, even though that is very unpopular in Indonesia, because it involves huge debt commitments. And because Chinese infrastructure projects are notorious in Indonesia for really poor conditions for employees, and it feeds into the deep-seated racist views of China in Indonesia. That's really the big issue rather than the details of trade deals. For all we've discussed after now, then how popular is provoked among ordinary Indonesians? You said the popularity has dropped significantly in percentage numbers, but has public sentiment shifted really that much as the start of its presidency? Are these polls just what polls are a momentary shift in mood? Ian? Look, in the sort of skeptical camp when it comes to reading too much into polls, as politicians say themselves, they do shift very quickly, and they don't necessarily capture the complexities of people's experience or views. I think the really interesting tension point and the recent upheavals show that it's a kind of a big demographic divide between a very young population, Indonesia has a huge youth population who sophisticated their network. They live online, they're global in outlook and many respects, and then a president who is increasingly showing that he's political vision and he's political ideas really come from a past in Indonesia. I think as time goes on, that tension and I guess just juncture of a kind will become more pronounced. We've already seen it in the demonstrations and in some respects, the narrative and response by the government, which immediately recalls elements of the new order, but you have a young population who didn't experience that and see the world differently. I think that's going to be the real challenge certainly from the government's point of view, how do they manage legitimacy when you have a very young Indonesia, a young population who experiencing all these cost of living pressures, things like a university degree and no longer a guarantee of a comfortable middle class or upper middle class life anymore, all of these things have sort of collapsed and while this current government isn't entirely responsible for that, they are going to have to manage that both in concrete terms but also in terms of legitimacy. So my sense, and it's a sense more than something that I've tried to objectively measure, is that his popularity is dipping quite significantly and particularly in the places where he really needs to keep it, which is in with younger populations, part of the pitch when he ran his election campaign and had Gibran as his deputy and of course there was the elite machinations of Gibran being a proxy for his father, but part of the pitch was also, "Well look, I've got a young person as part of my administration and we're going to really speak to Indonesia's youth." It's a complete disaster so far and including in how they've responded to the protests, which wasn't where there was an opportunity actually to have a substantive engagement and a listening to people's concerns, but instead a real dismissive, in some cases quite aggressively, so dismissal of this is, you know, treasonous and diverging on terrorism and all these other kinds of the securitization that Tim mentioned previously, all this is going to do is create a bigger and bigger popularity problem for, and legitimacy problem for the president going forward and making it even harder for them to sell the big signature projects, which, you know, aren't delivering in the ways that he'd promised. Yeah, look, I really strongly agree with what Ian said, and the difference between this, the highly sophisticated campaign by which Praboa and Gibran won that election, where they both represented as NMA figures on huge electronic billboards and Praboa cultivated the cute dancing grandpa image and Gibran the cool millennial sort of look, is such a contrast to the administration which emerged, which you'd have to say is tone deaf, that the split between youth and the government is yawning in a way that did not exist under Jokowi, so, and you know, come back, he, when he's campaign on NMAs and memes, and if you look at the memes now, we've got protesters on Indonesian national independence day, flying the one piece, the Japanese anime, the one piece pirate flags below the national flag. This is a sort of, this flag symbol from the, from the anime, one piece is being used by protesters now in the Philippines in Nepal as a way of pushing back against authoritarianism. That was called treason, when the demonstrations and rights took place, it was described by Praboa as treason and terrorism, and these are the people who were doing this, people who have precarious jobs, students, the technical college students whose unemployment rates are among the highest in the country, and then when they just, I asked for legislators' allowances to be cut back, the legislators called the protests to the quote, the dumbest people in the world, unquote, so yeah, I think this is a really fundamental problem, and most likely if it comes to a hit again, Praboa is going to, by nature, revert back to the new order repression approach, and I think that's the big fear. So the final question then to you both, Tim, starting with you, with all we've discussed, what do you think will be the key factors in determining whether Praboa should be on this presidency is even ultimately seen as a success? Look obviously, the economy is going to be critical, it won't get 8%, but whether the holes the credit and the budget for the big projects start dragging the economy further down is, is going to be a massive question, because it will determine what the government can do in the future, it will determine what happens with policies everywhere, but that can't keep cutting without provoking the crisis. I think how far the Army gets to penetrate civil life is an ongoing question that is also likely to go badly. I think what happens with projects like the Nutrition Smills programme, the Sovereign Wealth Fund, which is a slush fund in process, and with the capital city in New South Ontario all have impacts, but I think the rivalry between Praboa and Jokowi is a big one, Praboa is an old man in his dream job at last, and he's in a big hurry, and the hurry is so fast that they're breaking things, and Jokowi is taking advantage of that. But I think the really big question is the favour of civil society, you know, use that really broadly to mean just not just NGOs, but civil society, non-government, public debate, discourse, the young groups, their online life, which is the key life of the public in Indonesia. How the civil society survives, this is the really big question, because civil society produces the organisations, the NGOs, the CSOs and others that are really the policy power house of Indonesia, their monitor, their critique, their developed ideas, that government relies on. And if that, it's already chilled, and if that becomes inactive, then I think Indonesia has a really major problem. You're neat to add, I broadly agree with everything Tim said then, and would just maybe just further emphasise this tension point with civil society, which as I mentioned before, I think there's a huge generational dimension to it with a very young Indonesia versus a sort of a much older or ageing president and just conflicting world views and conflicting assumptions. And if Rabal increasingly defaults to his crystallised political ideas, and I guess his political reflexes, which are very much formed during the new order, that's just going to generate more and more anime and resentments within this younger population. You're seeing it now with the responses to the riots, where it was really a bit of a political litmus test. He had an opportunity to reach out and be much more reconciletry and take on board. In some cases, very quite well articulated suggestions for how to address people's concerns, but he didn't do that. And I think that really has set the tone going forward. So this is going to be difficult, certainly if his administration, if they're concerned with remaining and popular, not defaulting more and more to authoritarian measures, but for the Indonesian population themselves, particularly young Indonesians, I think it's going to be a real challenge in how they negotiate this government that is looking more and more out of touch with their genuine concerns and their genuine needs going forward. Our guests have been Professor Tim Lindsay, Markham Smith Professor of Asian Law and Director of the Center for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society at the Melbourne Law School, and Dr. Ian Wilson, Political Sociologist and Senior Lecturer at the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Murder University. Thank you both. Thanks for me. Thanks for me. Yeah, the Asia is brought to you by Asia Institute of the University of Melbourne, Australia. You can find information about this and all our other episodes at the Asia Institute website. Be sure to keep up with every episode of EIT Asia by following us on the Apple Podcast app, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like the show, please rate and review it. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show, and please help us by spreading the word on your socials. This episode was recorded on the 2nd of October 2025. Producers were Eric Van Beemmel and Kelvin Baram of Profactual.com. EIT Asia is licensed on the Creative Commons Copyright 2025 University of Melbourne. I'm Sammy Shaw. Thanks for your company.