Fresh from the weekend’s Independence Day ceremony held for the first time in Indonesia’s controversial new jungle capital, Nusantara, President-elect Prabowo Subianto finally made his way to Australia on Monday ahead of the expected signing of a new upgraded defence pact in Jakarta later this month.
That the current Defence Minister is visiting Canberra before his inauguration is good news, even if the visit does come well down his list after China and Japan, Malaysia and Singapore, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, France, Serbia, Turkey and Russia.
Prabowo has kept a tight circle in the interminable eight-month transition between his February landslide election victory and inauguration day on October 20 with few indications – beyond a core election promise to provide free school lunches – of what he has planned as Indonesia’s next leader.
What is clear from his travel itinerary in recent months is he will be a president with a greater global outlook, likely to seek a more prominent global and regional leadership role than his predecessor, Joko Widodo.
On the whole, that is a good thing for Australia, which has for years pushed for Jakarta to play a larger role in the region.
It is Prabowo who, with Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles, has fast-tracked an upgraded bilateral defence agreement, sweeping aside concerns from within his own government over the AUKUS pact that paves the way for Australia to obtain nuclear-powered submarines.
The new agreement will enhance interoperability and smooth the way for more, and more extensive, joint defence exercises on each other’s territory (even if Jakarta has been at pains to clarify that it is not a treaty). Still, after years of predictability under Jokowi (as the outgoing president is known), Canberra is now grappling with just what a Prabowo presidency will mean for Australia.
Under Jokowi, Indonesia’s foreign policy skewed towards the transactional as the President worked to build up Indonesia’s economy with an eye to reaching upper income status by 2045. That has led at times to Jakarta playing down tensions with China in its own waters to avoid complicating its most important trade and investment relationship.
Prabowo, a sometimes mercurial former special forces commander, is less likely to do the same, though he too is expected to prioritise the Beijing relationship.
He has insisted Indonesia will remain a “friend to all and enemy of none”, in keeping with the country’s historical non-aligned status that Jokowi has also upheld over the past decade, though how that pans out under a president more determined to play a global role is unclear.
The 73-year-old, schooled in the US and the scion of a respected Javanese family, has flagged a harder line on foreign trade, delivering some fiery tirades against Western nations’ accusations that Jakarta has flouted trade laws on palm oil and nickel. He has repeatedly committed to continuing the Jokowi economic project while also indicating he will seek to bolster the country’s international prestige.
All of that has the potential to deliver less-predictable outcomes. “Australia has been wanting Indonesia to play a bigger regional leadership role for some time but arguably Prabowo might show us that is not all an upside,” Lowy Institute Southeast Asia director Susannah Paton said.
“Are we really ready for an Indonesia that is more assertive at the regional level?”
We will soon find out.
One thing he can be sure of; Prabowo’s Indonesia will be a more active player.
Join the conversation
Disability support outside the NDIS
With the government looking to take pressure off the National Disability Insurance Scheme, consultations are about to get under way about what broader disability support might look like.
Read more
Progressive climate of fear as nuclear support takes hold
Chris Bowen will weaponise government modelling warning of blackouts under the Coalition’s energy policy and demand-supply gaps of up to 49 per cent by 2035, amid growing support for Peter Dutton’s nuclear pitch in inner-city seats.
Read more