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Why mining oligarchs could be the biggest winners in 2024
Regardless of who wins the presidential election, the mining oligarchs will continue to expand their clout in the country’s energy policymaking.
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Piled high: A worker operates a backhoe on Jan. 13, 2022, to load coal from a barge onto a truck for distribution at the Karya Citra Nusantara port in North Jakarta. Indonesia launched the first phase of a mandatory carbon trading program for coal-fired power plants last month. (Reuters/Willy Kurniawan)
The 2024 presidential election, some people say, will be a derby match for the coalition of parties supporting President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and for Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the nation’s largest Islamic organization. The idea is that whatever the election outcome is, the President and NU will come out as the biggest winners.
I argue that it is actually the mining oligarchs, rather than Jokowi’s political dynasty or NU, who will rake in the spoils of the election. Here is why.
It is true that all the candidate pairs contesting the election are backed by pro-government parties. There is no political alliance led or dominated by the opposition parties. Furthermore, President Jokowi has either a minister or a son on all the election tickets, making it a race for all the President’s men, and son.
NU also seems to have a stake in every registered ticket. Mahfud MD, a renowned NU intellectual, is Ganjar Pranowo’s running mate. Muhaimin Iskandar, leader of the NU-linked National Awakening Party (PKB), is Anies Baswedan’s. The Prabowo Subianto-Gibran Rakabuming Raka pair is also likely backed, albeit tacitly, by the NU establishment led by Yahya Cholil Staquf, a close ally of the President himself.
On the other hand, the mining oligarchs failed to secure a VP seat despite having spent much of their energy and resources with this in mind. State-owned Enterprises Minister Erick Thohir, the brother of coal tycoon Garibaldi “Boy” Thohir, must accept the fact that the President has the final say on who Prabowo’s running mate should be. Meanwhile, in the eyes of PDI-P leader Megawati Soekarnoputri, Tourism and Creative Economy Minister Sandiaga Uno, a mining businessman, is simply not the running mate that Ganjar needs.
But a closer reading into the state of the race today shows that the mining oligarchs are in a more secure and more advantageous position.
The reality is that the President is in fact betting on a single horse in the race: Prabowo. His decision to pair the former general with his son, Gibran, has practically ended his already rocky relationship with the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). While Jokowi is still officially a PDI-P member, the party has made it clear that it is treating him as a competitor.
