As Indonesia honored its fallen soldiers alongside those of Timor-Leste last week, the occasion served as a reminder of the parallel journeys the two bordering neighbors have trod, not least in their leaders' approaches to maintain national defense and public security within the corridors of democracy.

The main constraint is not the lack of capital available to fund the projects; it is the regulation.

Starting Aug. 1, four of the country's largest marketplaces - Tokopedia, Shopee, Lazada and Blibli - will begin withholding income tax directly from qualifying merchants' sales, replacing the long-standing self-assessment system. By turning digital platforms into tax collectors, the government hopes to improve compliance. The challenge is whether it can formalize the digital economy without discouraging the small businesses that drive its growth.

President Prabowo Subianto's response to call for "introspection" from the military, police and prosecutors is not enough.

As institutional rivalries and overlapping intelligence mandates intensify, President Prabowo faces a critical test: preventing the fragmentation of the Indonesian state itself.

By branding LGBTQ culture as a national security threat, Indonesia's new defense regulation triggers a dangerous constitutional contradiction that undermines the very human rights the state is sworn to protect.

To truly revitalize rural Indonesia, the government's ambitious 249-trillion-rupiah village cooperative program must move away from top-down bureaucracy and return to its democratic, community-owned roots.

Beyond the headlines of environmental conflict, Papua’s ancient pig feasts offer modern climate policymakers a profound lesson in generational forest stewardship.

If Malaysia continues to focus on domestic platforms and generalized talent cultivation without forging deep, structural links with Taiwan's market leaders, its economic spillovers will remain limited.

Beyond the standard headlines of trade and defense, the genuine warmth between Modi and Prabowo signals a profound shift from transactional diplomacy to a resilient, co-developed future for India and Indonesia.

Indonesia has taken a significant step toward overhauling the governance of its capital market after lawmakers approved revisions to the Financial Sector Development and Strengthening (P2SK) Law, paving the way for the eventual demutualization of the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX). The reform seeks to end the longstanding model in which the exchange is owned by its member brokerages, while also allowing institutions such as Bank Indonesia (BI), the Finance Ministry and state asset fund Danantara to become shareholders. However, rather than eliminating governance concerns, the new framework may simply shift them from conflicts among market participants to more complex questions about the state's role in owning the country's capital market infrastructure.

Something ultimately has to give: either crude prices will rise, fuel prices will fall, or both.

When FIFA tosses out its own rule book after a phone call from the US president Trump, it proves that the pitch is never truly free from politics.

As President Prabowo pushes for a massive structural pivot toward state economic sovereignty, Indonesia faces a high-stakes gamble: Can it resurrect the ideals of a Pancasila economy without stumbling into the traps of heavy-handed economic nationalism?

Ratification, implementation and utilization are often less celebrated than negotiations, but they are the stages that translate ambition into meaningful outcomes. 

As global automakers race to engineer rare-earth-free electric vehicles, resource-rich nations like Indonesia risk becoming trapped on the wrong side of a widening technological divide.

Energy transition is no longer only a climate imperative, but also a strategic tool to reduce import dependence and protect the economy from geopolitical shocks.

To capture global markets, Indonesia must pivot from raw smelting to predictable, long-term manufacturing policies that offer Western investors a stable alternative to China.

A pattern of last-minute reversals raises a troubling question about Indonesia’s foreign policy: whether it is guided by a steady, strategic vision or merely reacting to public pressure.

Amid rising geopolitical tensions and growing concerns over energy security, the government is considering phasing out liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for cooking—around 80 percent of which is imported—by reviving a nationwide induction (electric) stove program. At the same time, policymakers are also exploring the replacement of subsidized LPG with compressed natural gas (CNG) canisters. Yet beyond the promise of reducing import dependence, the question remains: Who stands to benefit from these policy shifts?

Centuries before modern democracies took shape, Ukraine was forging a radical blueprint for freedom, a deep-rooted constitutional legacy that remains its ultimate armor today.

Shanghai Futures Exchange is looking to extend reach across the Asian region, capitalizing on the Chinese nickel ecosystem that links mines in Indonesia with refineries on the Chinese mainland.

Given the new reality across policy sectors facing the world today, along with the securitization trend across the Asia-Pacific, there is no better time to revisit the work of Hadi Soesastro, whose analysis of Indonesia and the region’s response to great power economic competition remains strikingly relevant today.

To effectively counter authoritarian models, regional powers like India and Japan must stop sidelining human rights and integrate democratic values into their foreign policies.

ASEAN can no longer afford to mistake the military junta in Naypyidaw as Myanmar: Doing so ignores a profound transformation where alternative governance is already becoming a lived reality.

When university admission is earned by merit but decided by the wallet, Indonesia doesn't just lose students—it forfeits its future.

The controversy over military-style training for candidate managers of the Red and White Cooperatives and Fisherman’s Villages programs points to something larger than a single policy failure: the steady expansion of the Indonesian Military (TNI) into civilian governance and economic management. While the deaths of five civilian trainees has sparked public alarm, the deeper concern is how state institutions are being reshaped around military discipline and authority.