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View all search resultsUnder Jokowi's leadership, military creeps deeper into civilian life
Military involvement also often leads to budget misuse. Some regional administrations use their own budgets to finance their cooperation with the military, although the TNI Law stipulates the TNI should only be supported by the state budget.
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Rights group Imparsial has suggested that the military’s influence has grown stronger under the leadership of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who is in his second term. (ANTARA FOTO/Sigid Kurniawan)
T
he Indonesian Military (TNI) has regained and expanded its influence on civilian life more than two decades after the armed forces' wings were clipped following the downfall of Indonesia’s then-authoritarian ruler Soeharto.
Rights group Imparsial suggests that the military’s influence has grown stronger under the leadership of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who is in his second five-year term of office.
The military’s growing presence can be seen from 41 agreements that the TNI made with ministries, state institutions and companies from 2000 to 2019. Thirty-three of them were signed in the last five years (2014-2019).
The TNI inked the latest agreement in December 2019. It was a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with PT Freeport Indonesia to secure the area and company activities in Timika, Papua.
Some agreements authorize military personnel to take on tasks that intrude on people’s lives and freedom. These include seizing books about the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and assisting forced evictions in Jakarta.
Al Araf, a military expert with Imparsial, said such military influence reflected a setback in security reform during Jokowi’s leadership.
This condition fares even worse than the security reform stagnation during Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s presidential era from 2004 until 2014.
