Indonesian President Prabowo’s first 12 months in office: a year of living dangerously
President Prabowo Subianto is determined to drag Indonesia into the high-income club and is not afraid to use the military to achieve his aims. That is clear after his first year in office.
If international visibility is a mark of political success then Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s frequent appearances on the world stage – from Xi Jinping’s jamboree of dictators to the UN General Assembly and Donald Trump’s Gaza peace talks – would suggest he has had a bumper first year in office.
The 74-year-old has made good on his promise to carve out a more influential global role for the world’s fourth-largest democracy, even if Indonesia’s foreign policy positions have grown less coherent under his leadership since he took office on October 20 in 2024.
From confusion over Prabowo’s Middle East policy (did he really intend to be the first Indonesian leader to visit Israel this month, as Israeli media claimed?), to his cave-in on US tariffs, and early surrender to Beijing over maritime incursions, Indonesia’s once-disciplined policy positions appear increasingly ad hoc.
Its transactionalism was certainly on show at Sharm El-Sheikh this month when Mr Prabowo was caught on “hot mic” asking Donald Trump for a meeting with his businessmen sons.
The fact the faux pas ruffle so few feathers in Indonesia could be less a vote of confidence in Prabowo’s leadership style than a sign Indonesians have bigger worries on their minds.
With parliament almost entirely under presidential control and more than $900bn in state-owned enterprise assets now neatly folded into one unaccountable holding company (Danantara) answerable only to the President, Prabowo was quick to lay the necessary foundations for a trouble-free first year.
Yet it has been anything but, thanks to a sluggish economy which has seen millions of Indonesians fall out of the middle class, and 16 per cent youth unemployment – a particularly serious problem when more than half the population is under 35.
That can hardly be blamed solely on the current leadership.
But Prabowo was elected on the back of a set of ambitious and expensive core election promises: delivering 8 per cent economic growth and millions of new jobs; a free meals program for 80 million children and pregnant women; and a crackdown on cronyism and corruption.
Twelve months on, growth remains stubbornly at 5 per cent and tens of thousands of jobs have been lost.
Prabowo’s flagship free meals program – one of his most popular election promises – is a public relations and health disaster.
More than 11,000 school kids have suffered food poisoning from poorly prepared and stored meals, and still his administration is refusing to hit the pause button.
Prabowo insists the Free Nutritious Meals initiative has created 1.5 million direct jobs and is a cornerstone of his growth strategy.
“If people have money, they’ll spend it, on shoes, clothes, fixing their homes,” he said recently. “That’s how you multiply growth.”
But the multi-billion program, funded through deep cuts to other public services, is now taking up 45 per cent of the education budget in a country where the poor quality of education is one of the biggest obstacles to future prosperity.
“The (free meals) program is ruinously expensive, not providing safe food for children and is undermining confidence in the state,” says Indonesia expert and ANU emeritus professor Greg Fealy, who believes government intransigence on the issue is indicative of a bigger problem.
Prabowo’s own isolation, and his administration’s lack of transparency, is a major concern both within the coalition and among foreign investors who are now fleeing Indonesia.
The tone-deaf cronyism of his bloated ruling coalition also forced a violent reckoning at home in August when public frustration boiled over at a decision by MPs to grant themselves a $5000 monthly housing allowance.
Young Indonesians took to the streets, at first to demand a roll-back of perks equivalent to 10 times the average monthly wage.
But when a police armoured car struck and killed a 21-year-old motorbike delivery driver caught up in one of the protests, anger exploded into violence at the growing economic and social inequities.
Ten protesters were killed, thousands arrested and hundreds remain behind bars.
While Prabowo’s initial response was to announce a (what turned out to be temporary) reversal of MP allowances, he also called out the military, which under his presidency now includes an additional 23 new army, navy and air force commands and dozens of territorial development battalions.
If that was not enough to unsettle Indonesians who lived under the Suharto dictatorship before its 1998 overthrow, the military’s creep back into civilian roles under Prabowo (a former special forces commander and Suhartos’s son-in-law) has rung serious alarm bells.
Prabowo’s dependence on the military should come as no great surprise, says Fealy.
“But the penetration of active and retired officers within the civilian administration is Prabowo proceeding at a scale beyond what people expected,” he said.
Indonesian economist Deni Friawan says Prabowo is clearly relying on his military instincts to govern.
“He believes if the state is under one unified command it will move effectively … if everyone follows orders,” he told The Australian.
“That includes financial limits – he doesn’t see them as real constraints,” he added, notwithstanding that 20 per cent of the budget is now being spent on paying down debt interest.
Where all that leads is an open question given early signs of discontent inside the broader ruling coalition over Prabowo’s hard-headedness and inaccessibility.
If the Indonesian President’s popularity has dimmed one wouldn’t know it given the sudden dearth of polling since he took office.
No one, it seems, wants to be the bearer of bad news in Prabowo’s Indonesia.
Official tolerance for criticism and public dissent was already in decline under former president Joko Widodo.
Under Prabowo Subianto – an ambitious president in a hurry – it is giving way to a climate of fear.
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