Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
PaperclipPerfector
11d ago
(text post)
870 thread views
Transnational Thursday for September 4, 2025
- 26
- 4
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
@problem_redditor Do you have any thoughts about the unrest in Indonesia lately?
There's not too much I can tell you outside of the general info that's been floating around in the news cycle. Don't really have any family members or friends in Indonesia myself, so there's no real inside view to offer on that, and I have pretty much zero stake in Indonesian politics.
As far as I can tell things under Prabowo have been quite tumultuous and uncertain. He was a person that many Indonesians would have been afraid of at some point - during the Suharto era he was a special forces commander that may or may not have been involved in disappearances and killings (I believe he has himself admitted to the kidnappings of democracy activists in 1998), and after that he tried to restyle himself as a strongman candidate, a tactic which saw him losing elections in 2014 and 2019. This election he was able to do better, partially because he softened his image and restyled himself as "gemoy", and partially because he was able to appeal to a large base of young voters who didn't really remember the Suharto days and who cared more about his promises of economic growth and improvements in cost of living than they did his past. Oh and he gained the support of Jokowi.
He has promised 8% economic growth during his first term. There are challenges, though: the tax base he's inherited from Jokowi is one where the budget deficit's capped at 3% of GDP and the debt-to-GDP ratio's capped at 60%, so he has relatively limited room to increase spending. And Jokowi's presidency already reduced spending heavily, leaving little room for him to slash further to fund his objectives. To circumvent these constraints, he wants to elevate the tax-to-GDP ratio to 16% and the revenue-to-GDP ratio to 23%. But he's also ended up inheriting a weak, inward-looking manufacturing sector, crippled by protectionism and riddled with inefficiency, which poses yet another problem for him. So there are a lot of factors that means it isn't very likely he'll ever achieve that lofty goal in the first place. He's been put in a fairly bad situation here, having run on a populist platform which promised ambitious economic growth and big improvements in QoL, but with very few tools to actually make it happen.
His regime has introduced costly programs like an expensive $28 billion free meal programme and created a sovereign wealth fund which ended up not attracting the foreign investment it wanted due to fears of mismanagement. State revenue actually fell during this period, too - so in order to fund his spending, he has had to implement austerity measures and slash many ministerial budgets, and this hit infrastructure as well as other basic services. All of this got investors to panic in March of this year and caused the Jakarta Composite Index to fall by 4%, triggering a trading halt. Worse, the purchasing power of Indonesians has only decreased. So there's been a whole lot of economic uncertainty and upheaval, and then the public start hearing about increases in politicians' housing allowances to 50 million rupiah (about 10 times the Jakarta minimum wage, note this is on top of their already existing salaries). Then the delivery driver gets hit. Suffice to say there are lots of reasons for the rioting.
Now this is all speculation, but a lesser-discussed aspect of all of this is the possible role of politicking in the unrest. Jokowi retains some influence over the police and the AG's office, and the alliance between him and Prabowo seems to be at risk of fracturing. There have been funding conflicts between Jokowi's infrastructure projects like Nusantara and Prabowo's social programs, and Prabowo has possibly been trying to consolidate his power over Jokowi. The two seem locked in a power struggle at the moment - Prabowo has made entreaties to Jokowi's enemies, and has even pardoned them of convictions. And while the police have been harsh on the protestors, the military seem to have been standing by in many cases and at some points even handed out drinks and cash to rioters, which is very strange. It would be very helpful for Prabowo if the police were weakened significantly by this and the military were made to look good. It's not impossible that some of this has been orchestrated or capitalised upon for personal gain.
It'll be interesting to see how all this shakes out.
EDIT: clarified some things
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link