By Max Lane
Executive summary
- After months of speculation about what a Prabowo government would be like following the ten years of the Widodo presidency, speculation is starting to subside, and policies are becoming clearer.
- A large parliamentary coalition supports President Prabowo's government, which he has called a permanent coalition and which has also been described as a 'political cartel', in which Prabowo is the central figure. The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) is neither a part nor a supporter of this coalition.
- President Prabowo has announced very ambitious goals, such as an 8% economic growth rate. A major initiative has been to establish the Danantara sovereign wealth fund, under Presidential control and with weakened audit provisions.
- There is ongoing speculation as to how oppositional the PDIP will be in relation to the Prabowo government, and whether it will end up supporting the government.
- A string of corruption cases and a new law expanding the role of the Armed Forces have provoked waves of protest. Will this discontent develop and give birth to organisations representing a political opposition?
Introduction
In the lead up to the Presidential elections and up until recently, the prevalent mode of political activity in Indonesia has been speculation.[1] Much of this was focused on what the relationship would be between President Prabowo and the political parties, between President Prabowo and former President Joko Widodo and also between the President and Megawati Sukarnoputri and her Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP). The PDIP is the only significant party that, as of April 2025, is not in the Prabowo government and around which there has been speculation as to whether it would take on an "oppositional" role.[2]
Former President Widodo's mode of rule stabilised in his second term, following his reproachment with Prabowo, who became Widodo's Minister of Defence. Any specific 'branding' or specific ambitions for national policy soon faded away, replaced by the symbolic branding of the unilateral and undebated decision to build a new capital city in Kalimantan, alongside an undisguised dynasty-building campaign aimed at getting his son selected as Prabowo's Vice Presidential candidate. The latter provoked increasing protests against Widodo, especially by the critical, liberal sectors of the middle and working classes – the "Masyarakat Sipil" (civil society).[3] [4]
President Widodo left no legacy in terms of a development strategy with any distinctive policy or ideological character. The public prominence of national infrastructure plans, carrying on from the Presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and then the rebranding as Jokowi policies of social insurance and other schemes through the issuance of new benefit cards, all faded during the second term of his presidency. The use of incumbency to further dynastic ambitions achieved such a strong profile that it overshadowed any other aspect of the government's propaganda about itself.
The absence of any clear project for development also reflected the reality that Widodo would no longer be in charge of the government after 2024. Widodo's focus on getting his son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, selected by Prabowo meant that Widodo severed his relationship with the PDIP, the party he had joined 15 years previously and that had nominated him for two presidencies. Without any institutional heirs, Widodo himself lost the basis for attempting to project any post-Widodo development horizons, apart from continuing with the new capital, Nusantara. "Infrastructure" as a mantra of accelerated development lost its prominence.
In this context, there was inevitable speculation as to how Prabowo would, from the beginning, attempt economic development, or at least, economic growth. Prabowo had already pronounced very ambitious goals for Indonesia, as had Widodo from the start, but with greater bombast. In the election campaign, Prabowo promised continuity with Widodo's policies, but what could that actually mean since Widodo in his second term no longer tried to sell any image of ongoing development? Prabowo promised a spectacular GDP growth rate of 8%.[5] He promised free nutritional school meals for 82 million children in every school day throughout the archipelago. Ambition marked his pronouncements and style, and, this year, implementation. The promised free school meals programme is being implemented.
But what does continuing President Widodo's policies mean? How will he achieve his ambitions? These questions before his election and immediately afterwards were a key basis of speculation.
On top of that were speculations about how the relationships between established political parties and leaders will pan out. During March this year, such speculation has dissipated somewhat; the nature of his presidency has become clearer.
A single leader cartel presidency
A very palpable feature of public reporting on mainstream politics before March 2025 had been the absence of the leaders of the various political parties in Prabowo's coalition, apart from statements about their support for Prabowo's Advance Indonesia Coalition Plus (KIM Plus) The KIM PLUS Coalition contains 14 parties, seven of whom are in the parliament. Only the PDIP is not a member.
Prabowo is the undisputed leader of this coalition. He has no rivals, and he has proposed that the coalition become permanent.[6] While this is a somewhat vague formulation, it can be understood as the idea that all parties adhere in loyalty to Prabowo as a single unity and on a permanent basis.[7] This means no process to renegotiate and renew the coalition; in fact, it means accepting it as it exists now. This almost amounts to KIM Plus behaving as a united political party. President Widodo forged a coalition through cajoling, manoeuvring, compromising and opportunity sharing. Even if such tactics now still occur, they are overshadowed or hidden by Prabowo's various actions aimed at achieving a monopoly of 'loyalty'.
Some commentators have labelled the 'permanent coalition' as one operating like a cartel; in the last regional direct elections (Pilkada), the coalition sometimes ran only one candidate.[8] This can be seen as reducing electoral choice; however, it would be more accurate to say that it has simply made it all that much clearer that there has never been any real choice, based on policy or programmatic differences. Almost total unanimity has been the feature of decision making in the Indonesian parliament for the last 20 years.
Prabowo's approach has been exemplified by his two so-called Retreats. President Prabowo organised these gatherings, first for the members of his Cabinet[9] and then later for newly elected regional heads, governors, mayors and bupatis.[10] These were held at the Indonesian Armed Forces Academy in Magelang. Participants in each retreat took part in drills and callisthenics wearing military fatigues, and sitting through a series of briefings on Prabowo's outlook and policies, and what on what he expected of them. No matter what party they came from, the process was based on the assumption that Prabowo was not only Head of State and Head of Government but the leader of a whole nation of followers, all of whom owed him obedience and loyalty.
The Permanent Coalition, under a single leader – not a team leadership – demanding military-style loyalty was the framework for these and other tactics. The Permanent Coalition functioning as a single party has also been echoed in various speeches by Prabowo, where he emphasised that many of the coalition parties and their leaders were all the products of the old Suharto era party, Golkar,[11] including his own party, Gerindra. In 2004, Prabowo had put himself forward as a possible Golkar Presidential candidate, but lost out to General Wiranto.[12]
President Prabowo has not only been positioning himself as a sort of political Commander-in-Chief of the parties, their MPs and regional heads, but also strengthening the bureaucratic and economic basis for a centralised policy direction. This has been done through his choice of Cabinet Ministers, through the appointment of confidantes to key state bureaucratic positions, as well as moves to make the Minister of Finance more immediately responsible to himself.[13] The most spectacular and recent decision has been the establishment of Daya Anagata Nusantara Investment Management Agency (Danantara). Danantara is a new sovereign wealth fund, functioning alongside the Indonesian Investment Fund (INA). When fully operational, Danantara will be managing the assets of seven state-owned enterprises and have access to US$900 billion.[14] Apart from fears of corruption, as happened in Malaysia, or misuse of funds, the crucial significance of this in political terms is the more centralised role of the President, who is also head of the INA, as the final decider of the nation's big investments. When President Prabowo sat down with eight of Indonesia's biggest business moguls,[15] he did so not only as President but as a de facto giant fund manager. Significantly, the Co-Director of the biggest funds management firm in the world, Bridgewater's Ray Dalio, was also present at the meeting.[16] Prabowo is now Head of Government, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and, effectively, CEO of the institutions that will make major decisions about future investments. In relation to Danantara, one controversy is its freedom from normal audit oversight.[17] The House of Representatives (DPR) can call for an audit but as has been noted, the DPR has historically been unanimous in its decisions, and is now controlled by the massive parliamentary majority of the KIM+ Permanent Coalition.
Prabowo, the KIM+ cartel, and the PDIP
In 2009, after Prabowo formed his party Gerindra, he stood as Megawati's Vice-Presidential candidate in a PDIP-Gerindra Alliance. In 2012, when the PDIP nominated Joko Widodo for Governor of Jakarta, Prabowo was a high-profile supporter of the PDIP's candidate. There have been no ideological or programmatic barriers to Gerindra and the PDIP working together in the past. However, when Prabowo aligned himself closely with President Widodo during the process of Widodo breaking with the PDIP, it was seen as a betrayal within the PDIP. This alignment has become a barrier to collaboration between himself and Megawati. It is reported that there is considerable resentment in the party base towards Widodo's betrayal.[18] For the last six months, there has been speculation of an impending meeting between Prabowo and Megawati. The closest to some public communication between the two during that period was when Prabowo's son, Didit, visited Megawati at the end of March; this caused much media commentary.[19] Prabowo finally met Megawati in April; but with no formal statement emerging from the meeting, speculation has continued as to what the meeting actually signified. The problem of Prabowo-PDIP relations stems not only from Prabowo's continued public closeness to Joko Widodo, but is also evident in how Widodo was praised to the sky by Prabowo at a recent Gerindra Congress.[20]
However, this tension around Prabowo's alignment with Widodo, may only be the secondary factor. The strengthening of the KIM+ Coalition presently provides the framework for the relationship between Prabowo and Megawati Sukarnoputri and the PDIP. The PDIP, in turn, needs to maintain its own very separate identity.
The idea of the KIM+ Permanent Coalition supporting Prabowo, operating almost as a virtual single party, poses a problem for PDIP and for Megawati. The PDIP has a more serious independent existence and history than almost all the other parties, going back to the period of defiance of Suharto in 1996-98. Although it has not been a party of opposition or dissidence at all since then, its history shows an attachment to a separate identity, both by its elite, its public personalities, its members and its organic support periphery. This is true both for the PDIP as well as for Megawati Sukarnoputri as a political figure in her own right. There is an inevitable tendency among some sections of the party to resist subordination at any level to the KIM+ project. This is all the more the case when Prabowo remains publicly laudatory of the "traitor", Jokowi.
This resistance is manifested in the fact that as of the end of March 2025, the PDIP has not joined KIM+; it stands outside the government, but without taking on a clear oppositional stance – an issue still debated in the party. There have been some very visibly different approaches articulated within the PDIP, with some elements arguing for the PDIP to take on a more oppositional stance. In the earlier moments of these differences, the PDIP even organised a joint public forum with human rights organisations, with whom it had previously rarely had a positive engagement. While it appears that the PDIP has retreated from any activity that has an oppositional sentiment,[21] the differences are still seen to exist. As recently as February, when Prabowo was organising his Retreat for all Regional Heads, Megawati initially instructed all Regional Heads from the PDIP to delay attending the retreat. However, by the end of the retreat all PDIP invitees were in attendance.[22] Megawati's stance was certainly seen as a stance indicating a non-supplicant attitude. Media reports still discuss two sets of PDIP stances, one inclined towards being oppositional, and the other more open to working with the Prabowo government.[23] Whatever the spectrum of resentments and attitudes towards working with Prabowo that exists inside the PDIP, an oppositional stance is bound to be a tactical question and not one of opposition to Prabowo's basic policy orientation. Throughout the 10 years of President Widodo's two presidencies, there were no serious ruptures between the PDIP and Gerindra or any other parties in the parliament. There is little basis for seeing support develop in the PDIP on a policy platform actually opposed to any of Prabowo's major policy orientations. Considerations of a more tactical nature concerned with preserving a distinct identity for the PDIP and a strong and independent profile for Megawati, until the next elections are the more operative ones. While there are no doubt individuals in the PDIP, and even in the parliament, who do have different programmatic perspectives, most of the manoeuvring stems from tactical differences over how to position the PDIP among the parliamentary parties, all of whom share the same programmatic outlook. It appears that any tendency towards a new polarisation within the Indonesian elite that could be identifiable in an election campaign[24] has collapsed. However, the emergence of centralised cartel power posing existential questions of identity and differentiation for a party like the PDIP, or any other political currents standing outside the cartel, means that the potential for such a polarisation remains.
The unanimity among all the parties, including the PDIP, was shown again on March 20 when the parliament unanimously passed the new Indonesian National Army Law (UU TNI). This Law expands the list of civilian institutions into which active military officers could be appointed.[25] Public demonstrations against this reflected a deep distrust of the Army and the fear that this was a first step to return to military rule. Indeed, under President Prabowo, there has been an increase in the appointment of military officers to important government positions. During the previous few weeks, continuing into April, demonstrations were held throughout the country, spearheaded by students and youths and backed by statements from civil society groups and intellectuals, opposing the Law. These, often very confrontational demonstrations dispersed by police with batons and water cannons, featured the call: "Army Back to the Barracks". The demonstrations followed in the wake of an earlier wave of larger protests under the slogan "Indonesia Gelap", "Indonesia in Darkness", against an epidemic of corruption cases, sudden cuts in the government budget, and suspicions about the efficacy of the government's free school lunches programme. January through March has been a period when there has been a clear opposition sentiment in society, even if still only mobilising relatively modest numbers, that is, up to a few thousand at any one demonstration.
Despite this clear opposition from 'civil society', Puan Maharini, a central figure of the PDIP and Megawati Sukarnoputri's daughter, who is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, chaired the session where all the parties agreed to the law. Puan later defended the Law, stating that it did not represent any threat of a return to militaristic policies.[26] Some polls have since showed that the PDIP attracted significant negative public sentiment for this stance.[27]
Will the social opposition become a political opposition?
Since August 2024, there has been a renewed wave of protests after a period of relative quiescence since the demonstrations in 2019 and 2020 against the Job Creation and Corruption Eradication Laws. In August 2024, demonstrations exploded suddenly against various moves by President Widodo to have laws changed that would allow one of his sons to stand for election as a regional head.[28] [29] It was a show of anger against an incumbent manipulating the system with the aim of founding a political dynasty. In this case, the Constitutional Court had not given Widodo what he wanted, and the always-unanimous parliament was nevertheless thinking of changing the Law and getting around the Court's decision. Under public pressure, they postponed the vote.
During the last several months, the political atmosphere has been marked by a series of controversies that have led to more demonstrations. First were the suddenly announced massive cuts to the national budget which sparked fears of cutbacks in fields such as education and health and a general sense of impending austerity. Just as the sense of this impending austerity grew, a series of corruption scandals burst out in the media. These included alleged corruption in the oil company, Pertamina,[30] [31] and the State Electricity Company,[32] in the sale of subsidised cooking oil during Ramadhan.[33] There were many other reports of ongoing corruption cases around the country.
Apart from these issues, there were worker layoffs, problems with distributing cooking gas to households, and late payment of Ramadhan bonuses to some workers, including Grab and Gojek drivers. Human rights groups were also starting to state their fears about the new Law on the Armed Forces and how it would increase the military's role in civilian government institutions.
The mood darkened and large street protests began under the slogan "Indonesia Gelap" (Indonesia in Darkness").[34] In late March and into April, another wave of very angry demonstrations began specifically targeting the new Armed Forces Law. Apart from being very militant demonstrations by youth and students, ranging from a few score of people to a few thousand, the demand for the military to stay in their barracks echoed across civil society, university campuses and some of the media.[35] There have also been demonstrations around the world by diaspora Indonesians. The new Law has triggered deep-seated distrust and fear of the military, which can be traced back to the Suharto New Order era. Although the new law passed unanimously on 20 March despite the protests, more demonstrations have since taken place.
The failure, so far, of most of these and earlier demonstrations, even to get small amendments of the disputed laws, has provoked discussion among the dissenting sectors of whether the methods of protests and lobbying used in the past are sufficient. The Prabowo government and elite politicians have publicly belittled the protests, with statements like "Let the dog bark" or "If they think it is dark here, let them leave".[36] The latter was also a response to a slogan that went viral on social media, also responding to the 'dark' atmosphere: "Kabur Aja Dulu!" – "Let's get out of this country" was the sentiment in this slogan.[37]
However, out of the protesting sector, the focus is not on leaving but on how its views can at least start to have a greater presence in electoral mainstream politics. This leads to more thought being given to the prospects of new civil society-based political parties. The electoral registration and standing of candidates by the new Labour Party in 2024 is one manifestation of this process.[38] Whole only scoring a very small vote in the elections, it will have a few members in the district parliaments. All the signs are that it will try again at the next elections, with its activist wing organised as the Political Committee,[39] being particularly active supporting the "Indonesia in Darkness" protests. It is reported that the Green Party[40] (whose platform is described as 'eco-socialism')[41] is gaining members and is thinking of different election interventions. There are many signs of other civil society groups, trade unions, and student organisations talking among themselves about what new initiatives they can take.
While it is not clear how fast this process will develop, the discontent remains very present. President Prabowo has placed all his political and economic eggs in one basket: Danantara. If Danantara, with direct access to $900 billion, initiated by the President and under his directorship, get tainted by corruption or cronyism like Pertamina and PLN, the blame will come back to him. The same applies to failure due to incompetence or even bad luck. If corrupt military officials become involved or use force to suppress dissent on the streets or the internet, that will add to the likelihood of increased social volatility.
Endnotes
For endnotes, please refer to the original pdf document.
[Max Lane is Visiting Senior Fellow at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. He is the author of "An Introduction to the Politics of the Indonesian Union Movement" (ISEAS 2019) and the editor of "Continuity and Change after Indonesia's Reforms: Contributions to an Ongoing Assessment" (ISEAS 2019). His newest book is "Indonesia Out of Exile: How Pramoedya's Buru Quartet Killed a Dictatorship", (Penguin Random House, 2023).]