And just like that, President Prabowo Subianto, barring health issues, has effectively secured his reelection in 2029.

In a masterclass of realpolitik, Prabowo obliterated what remained of the opposition in a single day, striking with the precision of a military tactician-turned-political maestro. In a matter of hours, he killed not one, not two, but three birds with a single stone, reshaping the political battlefield in his favor.

The first stroke came with the sudden reversal of the controversial freezing of dormant bank accounts by the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK). After days of public outrage, Prabowo summoned PPATK chief Ivan Yustiavandana and ordered the accounts to be reopened.

The move was not merely administrative. It was performative politics at its sharpest. In humiliating his own official and swiftly “siding with the people,” Prabowo turned a bureaucratic blunder into a populist victory. He rebranded state failure as personal triumph: absorbing criticism directed at the state and reflecting back approval directed at himself.

It is a textbook example of affective governance, a rule not through institutions, but through gestures, emotions and optics. Prabowo transformed a policy crisis into a theatre of empathy, placing himself above the state and outside its apparatus, as a benevolent patriarch correcting the wayward.

This pattern is not new. In previous episodes, such as the 3-kilogram LPG canister ban, illegal mining in Raja Ampat and the territorial dispute in Aceh claimed by Bobby Nasution, his ally and son-in-law of former president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, Prabowo has used missteps of his own administration to his advantage. 

Rather than being blamed, he emerges as a problem-solver, a redeemer figure correcting wrongs. In political theory, this represents a shift from technocratic legitimacy to charismatic authority, a move Max Weber warned could erode institutional accountability and reduce politics to personality.