Prabowo Wins. Does Indonesian Democracy Lose?

Former defense minister Prabowo Subianto has won Indonesia’s presidential election in the first round, taking over fifty percent, enough to avoid a second round runoff with one of the other candidates. In fact, polls that have been highly predictive in the past suggest he won fifty eight percent of the vote, a large margin. (The final actual numbers take a while to come in and be certified.)

It’s a huge victory for Prabowo, who had lost every prior presidential bid, and he won in large part because he was endorsed by current president Joko Widodo (or Jokowi), who remains enormously popular, and because Prabowo positioned his presidency as a kind of Jokowi third term. Of course, Jokowi, who has presided over democratic regression in numerous ways—growing use of the army in domestic affairs, weak corruption enforcement, Jokowi creating his own family dynasty, failing to protect minority rights—got something from the endorsement too. His son is now Prabowo’s vice president—despite Jokowi once pledging never to create a family dynasty—and his son will be positioned, down the road, to run for the presidency. Or, if Prabowo, in his seventies, dies, Jokowi’s son immediately becomes president.

Jokowi, alas, turned out like every other Indonesian politician (with the brief exception of Gus Dur and B.J. Habibie, who was kind of an accidental president) in building a family dynasty, adding to the inside dealing and elite dominated politics that have undermined Indonesia for years, even as Jokowi pursued fairly effective economic policies.

As president, Prabowo will likely continue Jokowi’s economic policies, building up Indonesian infrastructure, trying to streamline the environment for foreign investment (in part in the hopes of luring companies fleeing China), and focusing on some populist policies designed to help the very poor. Prabowo also, as the New York Times notes, while not a climate change denier, seems ready to put into place policies that would dramatically boost Indonesia’s emissions of carbon dioxide, and cut down large swaths of Indonesian forests, which are a critical sink for carbon dioxide.

On foreign policy, Prabowo  definitely wants Indonesia to be seen as a bigger power in Asia and on the world stage—to take back real leadership of ASEAN, play a bigger role in global institutions, etc. I don't think he will, at least not yet, diverge from Jokowi's balancing of the U.S. and China, but he may be slightly more inclined to beef up Indonesian defenses and partnerships against China.

And now we come to the elephant in the room. Until serving in Jokowi’s cabinet, Prabowo had repeatedly expressed outright disdain for Indonesia’s already shaky democracy. He had run his prior campaigns promising to be a strongman type leader along the lines of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte or Turkish leader Reccip Tayip Erdogan. He even entered one rally, famously, on a white horse, kind of the ultimate strongman symbol, and promised to solve problems himself, not through messy democracy. He openly disdained the rights of minorities, including religious minorities, even though Indonesia is a secular state.

What’s more, and perhaps most worrying, a vast array of credibly allegations reveal that during the 1990s, the dictatorial Suharto era and immediate post-Suharto era, then-General Prabowo (who was at one point married to Suharto’s daughter) committed vast rights abuses. These included, allegedly, the kidnapping, torture, and possible disappearance of political dissidents—an offense for which he was removed from the army, as the New York Times notes, after he was found guilty of these crimes. Those disappeared are presumed dead. He also played an allegedly significant roe in sparking brutal violence in the then-East Timor, as the province held a referendum to leave Indonesia, and then faced an onslaught of massacres from Indonesian special forces, which Prabowo had led and trained in brutality, and allied thugs. East Timor was physically destroyed, and hundreds if not thousands of civilians were killed in the massacres. For years Prabowo was denied a visa to the United States for these alleged crimes.

So now, who is Prabowo Subianto? He is in his seventies. Until a few years ago, he disdained democracy, oversaw rights abuses, allied himself with Suharto, and had no interest at all, seemingly, in a pluralistic and secular democracy. Or is he the guy who, as defense minister, suddenly took on a more placid face and seemed to embrace the idea of democracy? Time will tell, but old habits die hard.

This publication is part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Project on the Future of Democracy.