Endy Bayuni, Jakarta – Prabowo Subianto reached the country's top job by winning the February presidential election in his third attempt. No one can question his faith in the democratic process. But now that he is the president, the question has become will he continue to abide by democratic principles and respect freedom and human rights?
Concerns have often been raised about his human rights track record during his military years, including allegations of his central role in the kidnapping and disappearances of anti-government activists in the 1990s, in the massive riots in Jakarta in 1998 and in some of the atrocities in East Timor (now Timor-Leste) during Indonesia's occupation. The allegations were never proven in a court of law, but he was honorarily discharged from the military in 1999 for "insubordination".
These allegations were used against him during the election campaigns in 2014 and again in 2019 when he faced off with Joko "Jokowi" Widodo in the two-horse race, and again this year against two rival candidates. Winning with nearly 60 percent of the vote means most Indonesians were willing to overlook his checkered military past and give him a chance to lead the nation.
Today, Prabowo fits the description of a "strong leader", given the massive support he enjoys from the public and the political establishment. The parties in his coalition government control 84 percent of the seats in the House of Representatives.
He commands the loyalty of the military and the police, and the support of the business community through his younger brother businessman Hashim Djojohadikusumo, and he can count on the support of both conservative and progressive Muslims, who account for 88 percent of the country's 280 million people.
Prabowo is as strong as any Indonesian leader has been.
In all three presidential elections he has contested, he has always projected himself as a strong leader who will make tough decisions for the benefit of the nation. At 73 years old and as a civilian for the last 25 years, he still projects himself as a military man.
A strong leader, however, is just one step away from a strongman, a leader who uses the powers at their disposal to amass even more power to the point of becoming authoritarian and then to sustain themselves unchallenged.
Today's list of strongmen around the world includes Russia's Vladimir Putin, India's Narendra Modi, China's Xi Jinping and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan. You can throw Donald Trump into the pot after his reelection as United States president this month.
Prabowo never concealed his admiration for the style of leadership of Indonesia's own strongman Soeharto, who was president from 1966 until he was toppled by a popular revolt in 1998. The late Soeharto was Prabowo's father-in-law. There have been campaigns to restore Soeharto's good name and now that Prabowo is president, the campaign includes calls to confer on him national hero status despite the ruthless tactics he used to stay in power for over three decades.
Questions about Prabowo's democratic credentials have been prompted by his own remarks. In the 2014 election campaign, he told a foreign audience in Jakarta that he did not believe in Western-style democracy which always resorts to voting to make decisions. This year, shortly after winning the presidential election, he said in a speech that democracy was "very tiring", "very messy" and "costly". This expression has been interpreted in many ways, including as his disdain for democracy as we know it today and a desire to change the status quo.
In his Oct. 20 inauguration speech, he reiterated the need for Indonesia to practice its own brand of democracy, which stresses deliberation (musyawarah) to reach consensus (mufakat). This means doing away with voting as much as you can in making political decisions.
This is also the same principle that Soeharto invoked to stay in power for so long. Musyawarah in most cases means heavy arm-twisting by those in power, or horse trading, and much of this is conducted behind closed doors.
Soeharto was reelected – or reappointed since there were no real elections – a total of six times, all with acclamation by the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) after its deliberation.
By building a big-tent coalition government, Prabowo will make sure that much of the political fights – inevitably including arm-twisting and horse trading – will be conducted behind closed doors with political parties and interest groups.
When it comes to new legislation, for example, much of the debate will happen within the coalition, and the House, which he controls, will rubber stamp them. There is little that the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the lone opposition party in the House with 16 percent of the vote, can do to stop them. The PDI-P has yet to take up Prabowo's open invitation to join the coalition.
Prabowo's predecessor Jokowi started this style of governing by creating as big a coalition as possible, but it was something that he built over a longer period of time. By the end of his 10-year rule, his coalition controlled nearly 90 percent of the House and commanded the support of all the powerful interest groups including the military, the police, the business community and conservative and progressive Islamic groups.
He also had relatives or friends in the judiciary who were willing to help him. He used the internet and social media platforms effectively to sustain his popularity, with approval ratings above 70 percent in the last weeks of his rule.
When it comes to the art of managing a coalition government, no other president had achieved what Jokowi did.
Now Prabowo has built an even bigger coalition from the start of his presidency. He once described Jokowi as the best political mentor he could ever have had in preparing him for the top job. Serving as Jokowi's defense minister in the last five years gave him a close glimpse of effective government and leadership.
But whether Prabowo has the same negotiating skills as Jokowi, we will soon learn.
In return for their support and to ensure their loyalty, Prabowo has parceled out cabinet posts and other strategic government positions to members in his coalition. To accommodate everyone, he expanded the size of his cabinet to 109 members after getting the House to remove the legal cap of 34.
This raises questions about his ability to coordinate or control all the ministers, who come from different political parties and ideologies and have different agendas and interests.
Soon after they took their oath of office, Prabowo took all 109 cabinet members to a three-day bootcamp at the Military Academy in Magelang, Central Java, with the intention of instilling discipline and building solidarity and unity. This is another indication of Prabowo's prevailing military mindset at work.
While Prabowo's military past continues to overshadow his career, his reputation was restored – officially, at least – last year when he received an honorary promotion to become a full four-star general, by a decree of president Jokowi. If his military past had been a liability, now he can openly flaunt it.
President Prabowo is a strong leader, but he has some of the traits that could turn him into a strongman, an authoritarian. Let's just hope he does not become one.
[The writer is senior editor of The Jakarta Post.]