TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
President Prabowo, strong leader bordering on strongman
A strong leader, however, is just one step away from a strongman, a leader who uses the powers at their disposal to amass even more power to the point of becoming authoritarian.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Congenial: Former president Joko “Jokowi“ Widodo and President Prabowo Subianto pose for a photo on Nov. 3 in Surakarta. (The Jakarta Post/Twitter/Jokowi)
P
rabowo Subianto reached the country’s top job by winning the February presidential election in his third attempt. No one can question his faith in the democratic process. But now that he is the president, the question has become will he continue to abide by democratic principles and respect freedom and human rights?
Concerns have often been raised about his human rights track record during his military years, including allegations of his central role in the kidnapping and disappearances of anti-government activists in the 1990s, in the massive riots in Jakarta in 1998 and in some of the atrocities in East Timor (now Timor-Leste) during Indonesia’s occupation. The allegations were never proven in a court of law, but he was honorarily discharged from the military in 1999 for “insubordination”.
These allegations were used against him during the election campaigns in 2014 and again in 2019 when he faced off with Joko “Jokowi” Widodo in the two-horse race, and again this year against two rival candidates. Winning with nearly 60 percent of the vote means most Indonesians were willing to overlook his checkered military past and give him a chance to lead the nation.
Today, Prabowo fits the description of a “strong leader”, given the massive support he enjoys from the public and the political establishment. The parties in his coalition government control 84 percent of the seats in the House of Representatives.
He commands the loyalty of the military and the police, and the support of the business community through his younger brother businessman Hashim Djojohadikusumo, and he can count on the support of both conservative and progressive Muslims, who account for 88 percent of the country’s 280 million people.
Prabowo is as strong as any Indonesian leader has been.
In all three presidential elections he has contested, he has always projected himself as a strong leader who will make tough decisions for the benefit of the nation. At 73 years old and as a civilian for the last 25 years, he still projects himself as a military man.
