Once blacklisted from Australia, Western leaders now want this hard man ruler on their side

Jakarta: For a time, Prabowo Subianto was not welcome in Australia. Gnarly allegations of human rights abuses coursed from his murky years as a Suharto-era general. Most of these he rejects as concoctions of his enemies, “part of the games of politics”. But Australia thought them serious enough.

There was never any public acknowledgement of a blacklisting, and Prabowo never attempted to test a minister’s hand by travelling to Australia while it was de facto in force. But as revealed by this masthead, Australia relaxed its quiet and potentially awkward stance in 2014 when Prabowo contested the first of his two elections against Joko Widodo, Indonesia’s popular outgoing president, just in case.

Prabowo Subianto (left), Richard Marles and Anthony Albanese at Parliament House in August.Credit: James Brickwood

The United States was more transparent and held out longer, red-flagging the former special forces commander for about two decades to 2020. The ban caused Prabowo to miss his son’s graduation in 2000.

This was a rough time for the man whom the Americans once tipped to succeed president Suharto, his father-in-law. Suharto’s corrupt and autocratic regime crumbled in 1998, and Prabowo was soon living in self-imposed exile in Jordan, having been discharged honourably from the military (despite admitting involvement in the abduction of democracy activists).

Not for the last time, he seemed spent. But Prabowo Subianto Djojohadikusumo is a force.

Proving anything is possible, Prabowo, now 73, was inaugurated on Sunday as Indonesia’s eighth president, completing a remarkable political rehabilitation. Alongside him was his vice president, Gibran Rakabuming Raka. Gibran is the eldest son of the outgoing president known as Jokowi, whose role in this unlikely succession story has been as important as Prabowo’s own quenchless ambition.

Thousands of Indonesians lined Sudirman-Thamrin Avenue, Jakarta’s main thoroughfare, to catch a glimpse of Prabowo’s and Widodo’s motorcades on the way to parliament for Sunday’s ceremony. Big screens on buildings at live sites played photo montages of the new leader and those past. People waved flags and sang, their enthusiasm topped-up with free meals.

Some 100,000 police and soldiers, including snipers and riot squads, assembled across Jakarta to keep order, and F-16 fighter jets safeguarded the arrival of 30-odd foreign leaders here to cheer Prabowo to the top of the world’s third-largest democracy. Ubiquitous military trucks and armoured vehicles was a reminder that after ten years, a general was back on top.

In a forceful, sometimes rambling hour-long speech, Prabowo said he would crush corruption, uphold “suitable” democracy and lift the poor from poverty. He promised not to meddle with other countries, and told them not meddle with his.

Anthony Albanese was not among the attendees, breaking a promise he made in parliament in August. It was not that he had made public any moral objections. To the contrary, Albanese lauded Prabowo during the same August speech as “such a welcome visitor to our country again”. The prime minister decided there was a higher priority – meeting King Charles. He sent Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles instead. Rather than President Joe Biden or Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the US was represented by a delegation led by its ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto (left) with predecessor Joko Widodo during the handover ceremony at Merdeka Palace in Jakarta on Sunday.Credit: AP

No-shows aside, Western leaders want the tempestuous former general smiling favourably on them and are content to let sleeping human-rights dogs lie. Indonesia, a country of 280 million people in one of the most contested and dynamic regions of the world, is too important, and only becoming more so.

In late August, Marles and Prabowo – both defence ministers – signed a Defence Cooperation Agreement on technology-sharing and joint military exercises. The deal is significant for the friendship, but nothing close to an alliance, as Prabowo was at pains to emphasise in his remarks at the signing.

Indonesia has a tradition of non-alignment, and on this Prabowo is strident. To make the point, he has visited 20 countries since the February election, including China, Russia and Australia. Widodo generally preferred to stay at home opening bridges and roads. He didn’t even turn up to this month’s ASEAN summit of regional powers in Laos.

Unlike Widodo, the new president’s military background and outward-looking inclinations will make him a “true commander in defence and foreign policy”, according to Teuku Rezasyah, an associate professor at Indonesia’s Padjadjaran University,

Prabowo’s guiding principle for dealing with South-East Asia’s many tensions seems to be a form of ‘live and let live’ through dialogue. In this vein, and unlike other regional leaders, he is accepting of AUKUS – the trilateral submarine and technology alliance that includes Australia – so long as it doesn’t disturb the peace. “One thousand friends too few, and one enemy too many,” he says.

Prabowo was born in Jakarta in 1951 to a powerful and political family headed by his father Sumitro, an influential economist who worked for founding president Sukarno until Indonesia’s roiling politics forced the family into exile. For much of Prabowo’s childhood, he lived variously between London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Zurich and Kuala Lumpur, learning to speak English, Dutch, French and German.

After their return, Prabowo’s brother, Hashim, went into business and became rich. Prabowo chose the military, training at Royal College of Duntroon in Canberra in 1974, his first taste of Australia.

Sunday’s inauguration will be the fulfilment of a decades-long ambition, and an old CIA prophecy. Now declassified, the document notes Prabowo’s rise in the 1980s, declaring him “the type of officer who could rise to national leadership”.

Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka claiming victory on the night of February 14.Credit: AP

“His marriage to one of President Suharto’s daughters in 1983 further advanced his career along an already promising path,” the authors wrote. He did not take over from Suharto, as was speculated, but he did quickly rise to become a top general and commander of the elite special forces squad, Kopassus. Villagers in West Papua and East Timor accuse him of atrocities, which he denies. Almost all allegations against Prabowo, from coup-plotting against his father-in-law to fomenting deadly anti-Chinese riots, remain unproven.

What the US Directorate of Intelligence thought* about Prabowo in the mid-1980s.

“If Soeharto should remain in office beyond the early 1990s, even younger leaders will come to the fore.

Although none of Soeharto’s children shows and inclination toward government or military affairs, his 32-year-old son-in-law, Capt. Subianto Sumitro Djojohadikusumo Prabowo , exemplifies the type of officer who could rise to national leadership.

Because of his age, he represents no current threat to the president, but he has all the requisite qualification: he is a Javanese Muslim military officer with combat experience in Timor and has a good reputation for leadership. Furthermore, he comes from an old and respected family, and is the son of former Finance Minister Sumitro Djojohadikusumo who, despite a long period of antagonism to the Soeharto regime, has again become one of the president’s trusted advisors.

Indonesian military officers believe Prabowo will rise to the highest levels of the military on his own merits. His marriage to one President Soeharto’s daughters in 1983 further advanced his career along an already promising path.

We believe that President Soeharto may eventually look to his son-in-law to succeed him both as national leader and as guardian of the Soeharto family fortune.”

*A selected passage from a declassified official document.

After returning from Jordan, Prabowo’s first bona fide tilt at the presidency was in 2004. The powerful Golkar party would not nominate him, so he started his own, Gerindra, in time for 2009. Megawati Sukarnoputri, who was Indonesia’s president from 2001 to 2004, picked him as her running mate for that election, but they were beaten by rival Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Finally, in 2014, Prabowo was up for the top job, only to come up against the juggernaut of Joko Widodo, the first Indonesian president to rise from outside the elite circles of politics and the military. He was from modest roots and family. He was everything Prabowo was not. The people loved him.

Prabowo Subianto waves to supporters after being sworn in as Indonesia’s eighth president in Jakarta.Credit: AP

Jokowi beat him again in 2019, with Prabowo screaming fraud, which has become more common for defeated politicians in the country. But then something unexpected happened. Widodo, his bitter enemy, brought him into the cabinet as defence minister. All of a sudden, they were friendly. Harnessing Widodo’s popularity by selecting the president’s son Gibran as his running mate, Prabowo went again in 2024.

To ram it home and keep the boss comfortable about matters of legacy, Prabowo ran on a platform of continuity while smoothing his strongman edges with daggy dad-dancing and Instagrams of his cat, Bobby.

Indonesia-watchers are curious to know which of Prabowo’s many public personas occupies the palace from October 20. The fire-breathing nationalist of 2014? The devout muslim of 2019? The continuity candidate, or something new?

“There are no clear indications of a major departure from Jokowi’s approach, except that there will be less emphasis on infrastructure. Prabowo will have more of a focus on welfare, which is laudable,” says Professor Adrian Vickers from the University of Sydney.

Lieutenant-General Prabowo Subianto (right) in 1998 amid a political kidnapping storm.Credit: Reuters

Prabowo wants to build 15 million new homes in his first five-year term. He will also create at least four new government agencies, including for climate change and carbon trading. The biggest initiative is his promise of free, daily meals to every Indonesian school child and breastfeeding mother to prevent malnourishment. Free food and milk is also excellent campaign material. But if delivered as pitched to voters during the campaign, it would cost an eye-watering $44 billion a year. To help pay for everything, Prabowo plans to boost economic growth to an ambitious 8 per cent a year, a figure far greater than Widodo managed.

Civil society groups lament Widodo’s illiberal slide. But they fear Prabowo even more. He has previously talked down Western-style democracy and shown interest in doing away with direct presidential elections. “Human rights don’t look like being a high priority,” Vickers says.

Rezasyah, from Padjadjaran University, expects Prabowo to consult Widodo on certain issues the same way Widodo consulted his own predecessor, Yudhoyono. But this will only go on for so long.

“Once Prabowo is on his feet, he will show his true character,” he says.

With Karuni Rompies

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