The Indonesian parliament recently ratified controversial changes to its military law to expand the armed forces’ role beyond defence into civilian affairs.
The revision broadened the scope of civilian posts that active-duty soldiers can hold, including the attorney general’s office, the state secretariat, the counterterrorism agency, and the narcotics agency. It also extends the retirement age for sitting military officers from 60 to 63.
This is another step backward to the despotic days of the “New Order” regime when the country was ruled by a military dictatorship under President Suharto.
Suharto’s New Order regime
Suharto stepped into power in 1965 after a botched “coup” attempt by a group of mid-ranking military officers who kidnapped and killed several high-ranking army generals. The “coup” created a power vacuum in the military, which permitted then-Major General Suharto, who was strangely not on the kidnappers’ list, to step in and take command. He swiftly blamed the alleged “coup” attempt on the Communist Party Indonesia (PKI), which at the time was a dominant force in Indonesian politics and enjoyed widespread support from the masses due to its reputation as a clean party and its effective organizing efforts. Suharto proceeded to commit an anti-communist purge, which killed millions of members, sympathizers, and anyone remotely associated with PKI.
It was upon the bones of the communists that Suharto built his “New Order” government.
Under the New Order regime, the armed forces operated under the doctrine of “Dwifungsi” or dual functions. In addition to its defence responsibilities, it also played a major role in civilian affairs. Active-duty soldiers were appointed to serve in parliaments. The army controlled the bureaucracy from the capital to the regions, acting as governors, mayors, and other local government roles. Suharto’s political party, Partai Golkar, had a dominant military faction that wielded significant influence over the selection of electoral candidates.
The army also wielded economic power by controlling natural resources and businesses. Active-duty officers often held leadership positions in timber, insurance, banking, and construction industries, earning significantly more than their official salaries.
Revolution betrayed
In 1998, Suharto was forced to resign after a wave of pro-democracy protests throughout the country escalated into violence. One key demand of the mass movement was the abolition of the military’s dual functions.
With Suharto gone, the demilitarization of the government became the primary agenda of the new government. However, this effort encountered strong resistance from conservative military leaders. In the following years, the army utilized emergency discourse to retain power and snatch concessions from post-Suharto civilian governments.
Between 1999 and 2002, three significant crises sparked a backlash against the demilitarization agenda: the defeat in East Timor, the outbreak of communal violence across the country, and the rise of separatist movements in Aceh and Papua. This series of events fostered a nationalist mindset among the political elites, which led them to oppose any radical military reforms, fearing that further reforms would weaken the army’s capacity to effectively suppress the sectarian groups.
The demilitarization agenda suffered another setback after the 2005 Bali Bombings. High-ranking officers used the terrorist attacks as justification for giving the armed forces a leading role in the war on terror. The possibility of reforming the army diminished as soon as they led the war on terror.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indonesian army maneuvered to further expand its functions beyond war and defence missions. It inserted itself into the front lines of the effort against the pandemic. Initially, its primary mission was to provide emergency medical assistance, including evacuation and quarantine. Its role quickly expanded to public discipline patrols and virus tracking and detection. Later, it assumed the leading role in the national vaccination campaign. To counter public protests against this power expansion, the military crafted a narrative that framed the battle against the pandemic as a form of warfare.
The old face of the new New Order
The amendment to the old military law was proposed by the new president, Prabowo Subianto, and approved by the parliament dominated by his ruling coalition in less than two months.
The sitting president of Indonesia, Prabowo, is not a new name in Indonesian politics. He was born into an elite political family in Indonesia. His grandfather was the founder of the country’s first state-owned bank, and his father was a renowned economist who held several trade and finance ministerial positions. Prabowo is a former general of the notorious special forces unit (Kopassus) and the ex-son-in-law of Suharto. And like Suharto’s, Prabowo’s military and political career is drenched in blood. As a special forces lieutenant during Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor, Prabowo organized groups of hooded militias to terrorize and suppress civilians associated with the independence movement. He was allegedly involved in the Krakas massacre, in which 300 Timorese, mostly civilians, were murdered by his Kopassus unit.
In 1996, Prabowo was sent to the province of West Papua to suppress the separatist Free Papua Movement, which had been engaged in violent clashes with the Indonesian army. There, he and his special forces targeted civilians and terrorized villages they believed supported the independence movement.
Prabowo spearheaded a campaign to kidnap, arrest, and torture student activists who were involved in the pro-democracy movement that led to the downfall of Suharto’s regime. Twenty-two student activists were disappeared by state authorities—thirteen of them still missing today. Following Suharto’s downfall, Prabowo was discharged from the army due to his role in the enforced disappearances of student activists.
Despite all the allegations, Prabowo has never faced trial, although several of his underlings were tried and convicted. Instead, he went into self-imposed exile in Jordan in 1998. A few years later, he returned to Indonesia, building up his wealth in mining and palm oil before founding his political party, Partai Gerinda. He ran for the presidential seat in 2014 and 2019 but lost both times to former president Joko Widodo (Jokowi). Prabowo refused to concede defeat after the 2019 election, accusing the government of “systemic” electoral fraud and urging his supporters to oppose the official outcome. His supporters took to the streets in violent protests, which resulted in six people being killed and many more injured.
After the 2019 defeat, many believed Prabowo’s political career had reached its end. However, in a shocking move, Jokowi appointed him to the strategic position of defence minister. This marks the start of the Jokowi-Prabowo political coalition, which will be beneficial for Prabowo’s 2024 presidential campaign.
In 2024, 72-year-old Prabowo ran again for the presidency. This time, he abandoned the patriotic, strongman branding he had used in the previous two elections and opted to portray himself as a harmless grandpa who does awkward dance moves on TikTok. This strategy was successful in gaining the votes of young Indonesians who were unfamiliar with his alleged past crimes. Most importantly, Prabowo received the backing from his former arch-nemesis, Jokowi, when the outgoing president placed his eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, on Prabowo’s ticket. This required Indonesia’s Constitutional Court to amend its electoral rules to permit the then-36-year-old to be eligible as a vice-presidential candidate, as prior rules stipulated a minimum age of 40. Jokowi’s brother-in-law, who was then serves as the Chief Justice, cast the deciding vote.
Prabowo’s victory in the 2024 election would not have been possible without the unprecedented intervention by Jokowi, who ignored the expected neutrality of a sitting Indonesian president and openly supported Prabowo and his son. Jokowi utilized his control over state institutions to gather support and suppress rival votes. He flooded contested areas with social assistance to potential voters, which boosted Prabowo and Gibran’s popularity. Jokowi also employed threats alongside the incentives. In the lead-up to Election Day, reports emerged from parts of Indonesia about local bureaucrats being threatened with corruption investigations by law enforcement to mobilize support for Prabowo and Gibran.
Since assuming office, Prabowo has shown his intent to reassert military dominance in civilian life.
The militarization of food security
Prabowo employs national food security as a Trojan horse to expand the role of the Indonesian army in civilian affairs. He mobilized the armed forces to support his administration’s two main food security initiatives: “Free Nutritious Meals” and “Food Estates.”
The Free Nutritious Meals program aims to provide daily lunches to all schoolchildren and pregnant women nationwide. To offset the program’s exorbitant cost, Prabowo has announced several austerity measures, including budget cuts to education, health, infrastructure, and other essential public services under the misleading pretext of combating “inefficiency,” the same discourse that Trump’s administration is using in the U.S. It is ironic for Prabowo to state concern for the well-being of schoolchildren while slashing the funding for their education. His government has announced a $480 million cut in primary and secondary education and a 25 percent reduction in funding for higher education.
The armed forces play a lead role in managing the program. Its responsibilities include three main areas: providing logistics facilities, operationalizing fulfilment service units, and carrying out monitoring and evaluation. Simply put, the army manages and oversees the program, limiting opportunities for checks and balances.
The sustainability of the Free Nutritious Meals program depends on the availability of food supplies, which the government aims to secure through developing 20 million hectares of food estates—large-scale agro-industrial plantations—across the country. Previous presidents have attempted to transform extensive areas of forests and community lands into crops. These attempts have often led to environmental disasters and conflicts with indigenous communities who resist the annexation of their land. Despite the history of past failures, Prabowo is undeterred in implementing his own project.
To support his food estates project, Prabowo has announced the development of 100 Territorial Development Battalions of soldiers with additional skills in farming and livestock to be deployed to various designated regions. The project was designated as a project of national strategic importance in order to justify the army’s involvement.
Some of the battalions have already been deployed to Merauke, a district in the West Papua region, where at least 2 million hectares of rainforests and Indigenous land have been designated to be cleared and replaced with rice and sugarcane plantations. Journalists have documented Indonesian soldiers wielding machine guns while operating excavators.
West Papuan activists have raised concerns about the potential increase in human rights violations due to the deployment of more Indonesian soldiers to the region. Indonesia already has a heavy military presence in West Papua since it annexed the region in 1963. The Indonesian army has frequently been accused of human rights violations under the pretext of suppressing the pro-independence movement. Over 500,000 Indigenous West Papuans have been murdered by the Indonesian occupation, and millions of acres of their ancestral lands have been destroyed for corporate profit.
The protests
Since February of this year, thousands of Indonesians have taken to the streets in major cities to protest against Prabowo’s policies. These protests have been primarily led by students who are concerned about cuts to the education budget. The protest movement has intensified since the announcement of the revised military law. Protesters across multiple cities in Indonesia are seen holding placards that read, “The New Order Strikes Back” and “Return the Soldiers to the Barracks.” The protest movement is organized on social media under the hashtag #IndonesiaGelap or “#DarkIndonesia,” signifying the bleak future for the country under Prabowo’s policies.
In West Papua, high school students have staged protests calling for free education and improvements to school facilities instead of free meals. They also condemned the use of soldiers to distribute free meals and the increasing militarization in their region. And, on March 20th, more than 90 West Papuan tribes, political organizations and religious groups launched a global campaign to boycott products derived from stolen West Papuan resources.
The weakness of organized labour
A crucial aspect of the current protest movement that is lacking is support from organized labour. This is unsurprising, given that labour unions, especially the left-leaning and militant ones, faced severe repression during Suharto’s New Order era. Now, twenty-seven years after Suharto’s fall, the Indonesian labour movement still has not recovered.
The newly revived Labour Party (PB) has struggled to position itself as a genuine alternative for workers or an opposition to the ruling class. This was evidenced by its failure in the 2024 election, where it did not meet the four percent threshold necessary to secure any seats in the national parliament. It did, however, win eleven seats in some local parliaments.
The weakness of PB can be attributed to its leadership’s tendency to cozy up to political elites, such as Prabowo. This strategy of the party leadership confines the party’s struggles to strictly workplace issues while neglecting the political struggles that are important for the broader working class. Following the election, the PB’s central figures have increasingly come out in support of Prabowo. This undermines the party’s potential to mobilize the working class against Prabowo’s policies.
The future for Indonesians under Prabowo is indeed bleak. Yet, history has demonstrated that when Indonesians unite in a collective mass movement, they can topple even the most brutal dictators. However, for the current movement to succeed, it needs support from organized labour.
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