Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto yesterday ordered “the police and military to take the strongest possible action” against alleged looters and rioters, as angry protests continued in Jakarta and other cities over the weekend, fuelled by deepening social inequality.
In a clear sign of political crisis, Prabowo called off a planned, high-profile trip to China to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit and called an all-party meeting to address the widespread ongoing demonstrations.
Protests erupted last Monday after it was announced that the 580 members of the House of Representatives (DPR) would receive a huge monthly accommodation allowance of 50 million rupiah ($US3,045) on top of their already lavish salaries and allowances. The accommodation allowance alone is ten times the minimum monthly wage of workers in Jakarta, the capital.
The decision only highlighted the enormous social gulf between the vast majority of the country’s population and the wealthy elite and their political representatives amid a slowing economy and rising unemployment, which has risen to 5 percent overall and 16 percent among young people.
Prabowo, who was only inaugurated as president last October, has exacerbated the social crisis by slashing spending on education, health care, public works and other services to fund his signature policies, including free school lunches, low-cost housing and an expansion of the military by 100 new battalions.
Prabowo, a former top general under the 1966-1998 Suharto dictatorship, is notorious for ruthless suppression of opposition to the regime. In the wake of Suharto’s fall in 1998, Prabowo has amassed a business empire and personal wealth estimated at more than 2 trillion rupiah ($US121 million).
Frustration and anger over the accommodation allowance was further exacerbated when a young ride-share motorbike rider Affan Kurniawan was run over and killed last Thursday by an armoured police vehicle as police attempted to suppress police protests. As well as the dissolution of the DPR, protesters began to demand the sacking of the national police chief.
Although reports are sketchy, protests continued over the weekend. Early on Saturday, local media reported that protesters had set fire to regional parliament buildings in three provinces—West Nusa Tenggara, Pekalongan city in Central Java and Cirebon city in West Java. Earlier, a fire at a parliament building in Makassar in South Sulawesi killed three people.
The homes of politicians have been targeted, particularly those who have been openly hostile and contemptuous of the protesters and their demands. One protester told the Financial Times: “We the lowly people are deeply disappointed with those sitting on the top.”
On Saturday, protesters raided the house belonging to Ahmad Sahroni of the National Democratic Party in Jakarta, destroying his car and carrying off various luxury items, including watches, expensive bags and a television. Sahroni had publicly branded the protesters as thugs and those calling for the dissolution of the parliament “the dumbest people in the world.”
Early on Sunday, hundreds of people broke into the home of Finance Minister Sri Mulyani, in South Tangerang near Jakarta and took away various luxury goods. Sri Mulyani was instrumental in drawing up Prabowo’s budget cuts that sparked protests among students and young people earlier this year over rising university fees, the cancellation of scholarships and the lack of job prospects.
At a press conference on Sunday, Prabowo, flanked by political leaders, announced a series of vague concessions to the protest demands raised over the past week, together with naked threats of repression.
The president declared that he understood “the genuine aspirations of the public” and announced that the House of Representatives would cut allowances for national lawmakers. He added that a moratorium would be placed on expensive overseas trips.
However, he offered no guarantees, nor did he offer any details as to what would be reduced and by how much. Nor did he refer in particular to the accommodation allowance that was the immediate trigger for the protests.
Prabowo said several government MPs would be stood down by their parties for making “improper statements.” The Nasdem Party yesterday announced the suspension of Ahmad Sahroni and Nafa Urbach. The latter had provoked anger by publicly defending the extravagant accommodation allowance.
At the same time, Prabowo seized on acts of looting as the pretext to announce a further mobilisation of security forces. “We cannot deny that signs of extrajudicial, even unlawful, actions are beginning to emerge, some even leading to treason and terrorism,” he said.
After declaring that “the state must step in to protect its citizens,” Prabowo continued: “I order the police and military to take the strongest possible action against destruction of public facilities and looting of homes and economic centres.”
Significantly, Prabowo was joined at the press conference by former President Megawati Sukarnopurti, the chair of the country’s only formal opposition party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle. This makes clear the existence of a united front of all the parties of the ruling class against the protests.
In another anti-democratic move earlier in the week, the government summoned representatives on social media platforms, including Meta Platforms Inc and TikTok, and told them to crack down on “disinformation” spread online. On Saturday, TikTok, the popular app for sharing short videos, announced that it was suspending its live feature in Indonesia for a few days.
A comment published in today’s Australian by its South East Asian correspondent Amanda Hodge, drew a comparison with the protest movement in 1998 that led to the ousting of Suharto. That reflects the nervousness in ruling circles in Canberra, as well as Jakarta.
Hodge commented that the parliament, by voting itself a huge accommodation allowance, appeared to be completely out of touch with public sentiment. Only weeks earlier, up to 100,000 people had joined protests in the Pati regency in central Java against a massive 250 percent increase in land and building taxes and other austerity measures.
After noting that in last weekend’s protests the homes of politicians were looted for the first time since 1998, Hodge wrote: “It has taken less than a year in power for the sheen to come off his [Prabowo’s] administration. And just as it was in 1998, when the Asian Financial Crisis tipped Indonesia into an economic emergency, it is hip pocket issues driving public anger.”
“Is Indonesia on the cusp of another people’s revolution?” she asked.