Indonesia’s political parties have agreed to revoke a series of controversial lawmakers’ perks and benefits, President Prabowo Subianto said yesterday, after an upsurge in anti-government protests that have killed at least seven people.
Protests began on August 25 over a proposed lavish new housing allowance for lawmakers, but the protests then escalated into riots after a ojol moto-taxi driver was run over and killed by a police vehicle close to a protest site in central Jakarta on Friday.
Speaking at a press conference at the Presidential Palace during which he was flanked by the leaders of various political parties, Prabowo announced a number of measures designed to quell the unrest.
“Leaders in parliament have conveyed that they will revoke a number of parliament policies, including the size of allowances for members of parliament and a moratorium on overseas work trips,” Prabowo said, as per Reuters.
At the same time, Prabowo suggested that this concession to public sentiment will be coupled with a harsh crackdown, asserting that some actions during the recent protests and riots constituted treason and terrorism.
“To the police and the military, I have ordered them to take action as firm as possible against the destruction of public facilities, looting at homes of individuals and economic centers, according to the laws,” he said.
The unrest in Jakarta, which has also erupted in other major cities, including Yogyakarta, Bandung, Semarang, Surabaya, Makassar, and Medan, is among the worst Indonesia has seen since the mass protests that brought down the New Order regime in 1998.
Over the weekend, protesters ransacked the homes of politicians, including Ahmad Sahroni, an MP for the NasDem party, and Nafa Urbach, another NasDem party politician, whose possessions were paraded by rioters on social media. Early Sunday, looters broke into a house owned by Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati in South Tanggerang, on the outskirts of Jakarta. As the Jakarta Globe reported, “the crowd overpowered soldiers guarding the gated community, broke through the portal, and forced entry into the minister’s home, vandalizing property and carrying away valuables ranging from electronics and paintings to clothing and furniture.”
During the protests, demonstrators also ransacked and set ablaze government buildings in various parts of the country, including parts of regional parliament complexes in Makaram (West Nusa Tenggara), Pekalongan (Central Java), Cirebon (West Java), and Makassar (South Sulawesi). So far, at least seven people are confirmed to have died in the protests, including three who perished in the fire at the regional parliament complex in Makassar.
This eruption of anger followed news that lawmakers were preparing to vote themselves a new 50 million rupiah ($3,057) monthly housing allowance, an amount equivalent to nearly 10 times the current minimum wage in Jakarta, and also far in excess of the price of housing close to the legislative complex.
The harsh police crackdown on the initial protests last week, which involved the use of tear gas, water cannons, and tactical vehicles, only inflamed the anger of the protesters, and drew in more participants, both online and off. Late on Thursday, a Brimob (Mobile Brigade Corps) vehicle ran over and killed 21-year-old ojol driver Affan Kurniawan during protests in Jakarta. The killing, which was captured on video, and widely disseminated online, prompted outraged calls for accountability, vigils by ojol drivers, and a cycle of violent protests.
As Erin Cook noted in her weekly newsletter Dari Mulut ke Mulut, Affan’s death highlighted the gaping class divide between the people that actually make Indonesia function, including the country’s vast network of ojol drivers, and a political elite that is perceived as distant and indifferent to the struggles of ordinary people.
The focus on the housing allowance has “opened the floodgates for a more intense focus on politicians’ salaries and, more importantly, whether they are worthy of them,” Elisabeth Kramer wrote for ‘Indonesia at Melbourne’ late last week. “The argument is that if politicians do not understand what it is like to live as an ordinary person in Indonesia, how can they possibly represent ordinary people’s interests?”
The political discontent has presented Prabowo with the most serious test that he has faced since taking office last October. Over the weekend, the Indonesian leader announced that he was canceling a high-profile visit to China due to the unrest. Prabowo had been due to attend a Victory Day parade in Beijing on September 3, marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.
So far, the Indonesian president appears to have been spared much of the public’s criticism, which remains focused on the conduct of the police and the parliament. As Cook noted, the Indonesian president is disproportionately popular with young Indonesians – during last year’s presidential election, she wrote, “the younger a voter was, the more likely they were to vote for Prabowo” – and so far the political protests have yet to target the president personally.
How long he remains immune from public criticism remains unclear. Despite his populist posturing, Prabowo has long been a staunch upholder of Indonesia’s often unequal status quo. As a hardline general under the New Order regime, he defended a system which was known for its incandescent levels of corruption. He has also been implicated in a host of gross human rights abuses, including the abduction of student activists during the protests that accompanied the New Order’s downfall in 1998.
During the 2024 presidential election, after two failed runs at the presidency, he successfully rebranded himself as a cuddly “grandpa” figure whose TikTok videos and selfies with his cat Bobby Kertanegara helped win over a young generation of voters. But the more prolonged the current unrest, the more likely it is that it begins to eat into Prabowo’s large base of support.