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Jakarta Post
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Indonesia is pulling away the poor’s only ladder: Education

With Indonesian youth recording the world’s lowest faith in social mobility, misallocated public funds and crumbling classrooms threaten to turn the constitutional promise of education into an inescapable poverty trap.

51 minutes ago
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Gibran’s fall, Prabowo’s power reconfiguration?

The court battle over Gibran isn't about a missing diploma: It’s an opening shot in the cutthroat struggle to reshape Indonesia’s oligarchic power under Prabowo. ...

1 hour ago
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Frans Seda, finance minister during a difficult period

Frans Seda played a pivotal role in navigating Indonesia’s economic crisis from 1965 to 1966. As finance minister, he helped restore stability amid hyperinflation, while his wider career reflected a lifelong commitment to Indonesia’s political, economic and social development. ...

2 hours ago

The Latest

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Analysis: The threshold fight: What 5 percent debate means for 2029

The House of Representatives is entering its most consequential electoral reform since 2017. As Commission II drafts a new Election Law for 2029, the fault line is already clear: the legislative threshold.

2 hours ago
Academia

Can young Indonesians still afford home?

Priced out of traditional landed homes, young Indonesians aren't abandoning their ownership dream—they’re rewriting the rules through modern co-living to protect both their savings and their time.

2 hours ago
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‘Jakarta incident’ changed aviation safety protocols

When volcanic ash silently choked all four engines of a Boeing 747 over Indonesia, it took 16 frantic minutes of gliding toward the ocean to spark a miracle—and rewrite the rules of global aviation forever.  

3 hours ago
Editorial premium

A ministry restored

With a seasoned diplomat back at the helm, Prabowo has restored the Foreign Ministry from a cleanup crew into an engine room.

3 hours ago
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Basic education first

Promising free higher education for all is a fiscal fantasy that threatens to bankrupt Indonesia's elementary and secondary school classrooms before the state even honors its basic education mandate.

4 hours ago
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Smelters and garrisons: Militarization of extractive economy

Beneath the rhetoric of national resilience, Indonesia is deploying troops not to protect populations, but to turn its resource-rich frontier into an armed, state-capitalist enclave.

19 hours ago
Academia

Glimpses of hope from the UN General Assembly

While users should make informed decisions on when and how to use generative AI, its environmental cost vis-à-vis climate change should be an integral part of the ongoing debate on the rapidly advancing technology's regulation and sovereignty.

21 hours ago
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Protecting workers, livelihoods from El Niño’s fallout

Across Asia and the Pacific, El Niño’s effects can quickly reach workplaces, household budgets and local economies, hitting vulnerable workers, particularly those in the informal economy. Protecting their livelihoods will require an integrated approach linking climate preparedness with social protection and sound macroeconomic policies. 

22 hours ago
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Indonesia’s new terrorism challenge: The terrorist criminal continuum

As violent extremism shifts from structured networks to decentralized online subcultures, Indonesia’s counterterrorism strategy must evolve from dismantling terrorist organizations to intercepting individual pathways to violence before tragedy strikes.

23 hours ago
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Indonesia’s AI data center ambition needs a resource rule book

Indonesia is racing to become Asia’s next AI data center powerhouse, but without strict resource safeguards, the boom risks draining the nation’s power grid, water supply and local communities.

1 day ago
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BI can hold rates, but Indonesia cannot escape expensive money

As high-cost borrowing collides with ambitious state spending, Indonesia must master smarter debt management and innovative finance before fiscal pressure catches up with its national ambitions.

1 day ago
Opinion premium

Analysis: RI’s illegal cigarette trade A problem of enforcement and incentives

Indonesia's illegal cigarette trade has long deprived the state of revenue and undermined formal producers. Recent allegations that people linked to a House of Representatives legislator sold counterfeit excise stamps, however, suggest that illicit trade may also involve those with access to formal institutions. The case raises questions about how illegal cigarettes keep circulating through counterfeit branding, informal distribution and alleged collusion, even as authorities tighten enforcement and regulation.

1 day ago
Editorial premium

Don’t let things slip now

As a battered rupiah, soaring oil prices, and global turmoil test the country's new economic chiefs, their trial by fire will determine whether technocratic discipline can hold against mounting political pressure.

1 day ago
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How to stop the AI-pocalypse

Anxiety has recently taken an existential turn, as the industry’s leaders have begun warning that AI could very well end humanity.

1 day ago
Academia

Where will Fed tightening hit hardest in Asia?

Asian economies are likely to see deepening diversion between countries with low inflation and those with spiraling inflation alongside heavy deficits amid headwinds from US monetary tightening.

1 day ago
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The vanishing of Indonesia from the heart of Papua

Beneath the machinery of state security and industrial extraction, Papua’s deepest resistance lives in what cannot be cleared: Its people’s ancestral bond to the land.

1 day ago
Academia

Greater China-US exchanges crucial for deepening trust between peoples

People's diplomacy is valuable because it acknowledges competition while setting boundaries, fostering cooperation and providing buffers for tensions.

2 days ago
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A dangerous loophole awaits agrarian reform law

Behind the reformist rhetoric of Indonesia’s new Agrarian Law lies a dangerous corporate loophole: a legal apparatus designed not to return land to the people, but to legitimize its capture by the powerful.

2 days ago
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After Gestapu monuments a Gestok memorial must follow

Indonesia’s monuments remember the generals slain in 1965, but true democratic strength lies in finally carving out stone for the hundreds of thousands murdered in the purge that followed.

2 days ago
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Analysis: Land agency graft probe puts high-profile figures in spotlight

Indonesia has barely had time to digest one high-profile corruption scandal before another has breached the surface, this time striking at the heart of the country's land administration. The latest case centers on the Agrarian and Spatial Planning Ministry/National Land Agency (BPN). A sweeping bribery probe by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has ensnared senior bureaucrats, a prominent property developer and multiple operatives identified as close associates of minister Nusron Wahid, a Golkar politician.

2 days ago
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China's art of trade

Jakarta can take a critical page out of Beijing's playbook, the outcome of which was proven at last week's Washington summit: Hold vital assets hostage to extract a pragmatic deal.

2 days ago
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If history belongs to the victors, civilization has no place

A nation cannot build a democratic future on sanitized myths: until Indonesia confronts the violent truths of its past, its history remains an instrument of power rather than a measure of civilization.

3 days ago
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Time to stop scaring the nation with the communist boogeyman

More than six decades after the bloodshed of 1965-1966, President Prabowo has a historic window to finally bury the red phantom and lead the nation into a future free from manufactured fear.

3 days ago
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Navigating systemic global multidimensional crises

As concurrent crises collide ahead of Bangkok’s IMF-World Bank meetings, small and emerging economies are left footing the bill for a fractured global order they did not create.

3 days ago
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In search of excellent and honorable minds in Indonesian politics

As President Prabowo marks two years in office, the true test of his administration is not the tally of his policies but whether it is forging the intellectual and moral backbone required to govern a great republic like Indonesia.

3 days ago
Opinion premium

Analysis: Indonesia’s tax revenue: Mirage or miracle

Indonesia’s economy has recently received a welcome piece of good news, with the latest state budget figures showing a sharp increase in tax revenue. Net tax revenue rose by a remarkable 24.1 percent year-on-year as of August 2026, reaching Rp 1.409 quadrillion (US$79 billion), or 59.8 percent of the full-year target. Finance Minister Suahasil Nazara attributed the increase to higher global oil and gas prices, strong domestic consumption and improvements in the Coretax system.

3 days ago
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Semiconductor diplomacy: How Indonesia can play its hand

By trading raw mineral wealth for technology transfers and seizing the neutral ground in the chip war, Indonesia can turn a high-stakes geopolitical scramble into its greatest industrial leap.

3 days ago

Today's ePost

Sat, October 3, 2026

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