Prabowo Subianto was elected with a landslide victory in February 2024, assisted by unprecedented backing from the outgoing Widodo administration. While Prabowo is poised to make a strong start to his presidency due to widespread political support, observers anticipate an increase in the entrenchment of democratic defects and weakened scrutiny of governmental power, hinting at an ongoing deterioration of Indonesia’s democratic environment. Controversial changes to the legislature and moves to compromise judicial independence, civilian liberties and press freedom have also provoked concern about the future of democratic governance in Indonesia.
Indonesia is now seeing a handover of political power far more stage-managed than ever before in its post-democratic history, as President Joko Widodo and Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto sustain the alliance that helped the former special forces general win an historic landslide in the February 2024 presidential elections by posing as Widodo’s natural heir.
Prabowo has locked in this dominance by building an unprecedentedly broad party coalition ahead of his inauguration on 20 October. All Indonesian presidents seek to minimise the prospect of pushback against their programs by forming party coalitions far bigger than required to simply pass legislation — but even before the election Prabowo openly flagged his ambitions to be the first president to build a governing coalition that encompasses all the parties represented in parliament.
It’s plausible that Prabowo might become the first democratically-elected president to achieve that goal. Parties that backed his opponents in February’s election haven’t wasted time in striking deals to join Prabowo’s coalition in exchange for representation in his cabinet — and with that, the opportunities to tap state budgets to recoup the huge expenses incurred in the legislative polls also held in February. To make room for all these parties, moves are underway to amend legislation to allow for the expansion of ministerial-level positions from 34 to 40. Even the major holdout, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) — of which President Widodo is an estranged member — is more likely than not to join the fold eventually.
As Prabowo’s alliance with the outgoing president holds firm, and the support of party elites is assured, work is now in place for Prabowo’s signature election promise: a national program of free school meals. Widodo’s technocrats have scaled the program down from its grandiose campaign-period version, which was estimated to cost almost 2 per cent of GDP per year. Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati has backed the program and has negotiated with lawmakers to include 71 trillion rupiah (A$6.5 billion) for it in the 2025 budget, which is set to be introduced to parliament just ahead of Prabowo’s inauguration.
Regardless of how efficiently it addresses Indonesia’s troubling levels of childhood malnutrition, Prabowo’s school meals program has big political potential. The Widodo decade, marked by the steady expansion of subsidised healthcare, social security and cash transfers, has confirmed how important the strategic use of Indonesia’s nascent welfare state has become to a president’s popularity. Prabowo’s school meals could be as important a political asset for him as Brazil’s Bolsa Familia cash transfers were for the Lula da Silva government, or the ‘30 Baht’ program of subsidised health care was for former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
As a wave of local elections scheduled for November 2024 approaches, Widodo would hope that the short-term payoff of putting the machinery of government behind Prabowo’s policy agenda is the cooperation of Prabowo’s Gerindra party in backing Widodo’s family members and other allies in key gubernatorial races. After Widodo’s eldest son Gibran Rakabuming was elected vice-president alongside Prabowo in February, he is weighing up a candidacy for his second son Kaesang in Central Java; and his son-in-law will also seek the governorship of North Sumatra.
Just how much Prabowo cooperates with Widodo’s dynasty-building agenda will be clear when candidate nominations come due in August, and just how much their strategies match up will be seen as a key gauge of how they see their interests aligning, as well as the balance of power between them.
Both men want to prevent a coalition forming in support of Anies Baswedan who, having placed second in February’s presidential election, is looking to be elected governor of Jakarta for a second term in November. After being sacked from Widodo’s first-term cabinet in 2016, Anies emerged as the most popular politician outside the government fold, and Widodo and Prabowo would both rather he fade into irrelevance than use the Jakarta governorship as a stepping-stone to another presidential run in 2029.
The potential for Widodo and Prabowo to diverge on local election tactics as the August deadline approaches is a reminder of the fundamentally transactional nature of their alliance, despite all the rhetoric of shared vision and mutual respect that continues to adorn it. The strong start that Prabowo will get after his inauguration, thanks in part to Widodo’s help, will ironically make it easier for Prabowo to marginalise him when their alliance no longer passes a cost–benefit test.
This will be all the more true if Prabowo’s successful replication of the Widodo governing formula works — choking off elite opposition by co-opting parties into cabinet, while burnishing his own popularity by delivering on his key campaign promises. With voters preoccupied with economic concerns, there are likely to be conducive conditions for the Prabowo government to get away with further weakening of civil liberties, watchdog institutions and the limitations on the military’s domestic role. Already, parties are using the parliament’s lame-duck period to progress a range of bills that degrade media regulation, politicise judicial appointments and expand opportunities for the secondment of military personnel to civilian institutions.
There isn’t much of a policy silver lining to be seen amid the decreasing exposure of Indonesia’s elite to external checks and balances, and the increasing isolation of pro-democratic civil society. Indonesia’s endemic public sector corruption, and the usual orientation of policymaking around the interests of rent-seekers, are part and parcel of the construction and maintenance of elite coalitions of the kind Prabowo is now putting in place.
Just as it was over the Widodo decade, the safety of Prabowo’s political position and the unlikelihood that he’ll make serious attempts to improve Indonesia’s institutional quality are two sides of the same coin.
Liam Gammon is Research Fellow at the East Asian Bureau of Economic Research and a member of the East Asia Forum editorial board.