Speaker 1: Hello, Ruby Jones. Here. Every day this week seven AM
Speaker 1: is bringing you some of our favorite features from Schwartz Media,
Speaker 1: read to you by the person who wrote it. Today
Speaker 1: it's Jackie Baker, Principal Fellow of the Indo Pacific Research
Speaker 1: Center at Murdoch University, reading her story Forcing History from
Speaker 1: Australian Foreign Affairs. This year, former General Proboo Subianto was
Speaker 1: sworn in as Indonesia's eighth president. But twenty five years
Speaker 1: ago he was a prior, a disgraced general seeking exile
Speaker 1: in Jordan. Jackie Baker charts his rehabilitation and extraordinary climb
Speaker 1: to presidency and what it means for Indonesia's fragile democracy.
Speaker 2: It's Wednesday, January eighth, Forcing History. Probo Subianto, Indonesia's president,
Speaker 2: is many things. He is a three time loser of
Speaker 2: earlier presidential runs, first as Megawati Sukano Putri's vice presidential
Speaker 2: candidate in two thousand and nine, and then in bruising
Speaker 2: campaigns in twenty fourteen and twenty nineteen against CHACOI Wudodo
Speaker 2: to Wudodo. Prabo is the torch bearer for his legacy.
Speaker 2: A political frenemy who is indebted to him for his
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four electoral success to tens of millions of
Speaker 2: young Indonesian voters. Here's the cuddly anointed successor of the
Speaker 2: beloved President Jacoe with a ponchon for Daggy TikTok moves
Speaker 2: to a cohort of voters with much longer memories. Here's
Speaker 2: the veteran of a brutal and oppressive military who was
Speaker 2: devoted three decades of public life to weaponizing agitation an
Speaker 2: extra judicial violence in service of his own political ambitions.
Speaker 2: First and foremost, though Probosubiato should be understood as a
Speaker 2: blue blood, he bears the name Jojo Hadi Kosumo, a
Speaker 2: family best understood as fully paid up members of an
Speaker 2: Indonesian post colonial class, a stratum of extremely wealthy, extremely
Speaker 2: powerful changeling families that are a debt at maintaining their
Speaker 2: privilege across a range of political regimes. For the Jojo
Speaker 2: Hadi Kosumo's, the pursuit of power has not been smooth,
Speaker 2: and yet, in the face of missteps that for other
Speaker 2: elites might have proven fatal, this family has preserved and
Speaker 2: accumulated their social power right up until the twentieth of
Speaker 2: October twenty twenty four, when the apex of political power
Speaker 2: the presidency will be in their hands. Like most dynasties
Speaker 2: in post colonial republics, the jojo Hadi Kasumos are the
Speaker 2: perverse products of empire. The family's minor claim to Javanese
Speaker 2: gent the element Kusumo in the name signals Javanese nobility,
Speaker 2: gave them entry into the Dutch civil service, which opened
Speaker 2: up channels of economic and political power. Praboa's grandfather, Margono,
Speaker 2: grew up in East Java in a family that had
Speaker 2: aristocratic claims but was economically humble. Margono followed in his
Speaker 2: father's footsteps, progressing from a Dutch education to a career
Speaker 2: in the Dutch East Indies Department of the Interior, specializing
Speaker 2: in banking. During the War for Indonesian Independence, two of
Speaker 2: Margono's young sons were killed during a raid on a
Speaker 2: Japanese armory for weapons, leaving only his eldest son, Sumitro,
Speaker 2: Praboa's father. After independence, Margono established Bank Nagada Indonesia or
Speaker 2: the National Bank of Indonesia, and became a member of
Speaker 2: the Provisional People's Council, a kind of transitory legislative assembly.
Speaker 2: For the new Republic. Praboa's father, Sumitro, obtained his PhD
Speaker 2: in economics in Rotterdam and took up a series of
Speaker 2: cabinet positions in trade, economics and finance in the fragile
Speaker 2: governments of the early post independence period. Sumitro was a
Speaker 2: member of the Socialist Party of Indonesia, who distilled his
Speaker 2: thinking in a concept he called economic democracy, which sought
Speaker 2: to address structural economic challenges through redistribution. But Sumitro's political
Speaker 2: assent was cut short when dogged by rumors of party
Speaker 2: corruption and cronyism, and publicly eviscerated as a foreign stooge
Speaker 2: for capitalism. He fled cabinet for a rival republic on
Speaker 2: the island of Sumatra known as the Revolutionary Government of
Speaker 2: the Republic of Indonesia or otherwise the P doubl Ar I.
Speaker 2: The fall of the P double r I in nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty eight sent Sumitro into self imposed exile, first in Singapore,
Speaker 2: then in Malaysia, Hong Kong, France, Switzerland, and the United
Speaker 2: Kingdom with his family, including father Margono, Sumitro's Christian wife Dora,
Speaker 2: two elder daughters, Mariani and Bianti, baby son Hashim and
Speaker 2: five year old Probo Subianto. Prabo has reflected publicly many
Speaker 2: times on this period of familial isolation. At the dinner table,
Speaker 2: Margono would recount the heroism of his two dead sons,
Speaker 2: Sujono and Subianto, whose name Probo bears. Subianto and Sujono
Speaker 2: had been part of a group of rash young activists
Speaker 2: who kidnapped the future President Sukardino to hasten the declaration
Speaker 2: of Indonesia's independence. Both later died in nineteen forty six
Speaker 2: in a battle known as the Lengkong Incident during the
Speaker 2: Japanese occupation. Probo credits these accounts with instilling in him
Speaker 2: a deep desire for military service and a sense of
Speaker 2: the great significance of the Jojo Hadikusumo's for the course
Speaker 2: of Indonesia. Sumitro too often reflected on the party conflicts
Speaker 2: that royaled the early days of the Republic and on
Speaker 2: his momentous decision to lump in with the doomed p
Speaker 2: double r Eye movement. Perhaps some inkling of those dinner
Speaker 2: table conversations was captured in Sumitro's later writings. He wrote,
Speaker 2: history doesn't forgive those who miss an opportunity of historic moment.
Speaker 2: Those who are too impestuous and are eager to force
Speaker 2: history may get a second chance if they survive, but
Speaker 2: never those who miss the historic moments. Probo also likes
Speaker 2: to remind his foreign audiences that, as a child in
Speaker 2: Singapore and Hong Kong, then still under British rule, brown
Speaker 2: skinned boys like him, had limited access to public spaces.
Speaker 2: We know how demeaning it is, he said, to be
Speaker 2: considered second, third, fourth class. This distance must have been
Speaker 2: vexing for a young Probo, whose class status nonetheless secured
Speaker 2: him entry into the elite schools of the very globalists
Speaker 2: against whom he would later rail in campaign speeches. This
Speaker 2: included the Victoria Institution in Kuala Lumpur, the Gleneli Junior
Speaker 2: School in Hong Kong, the Zurich International School, and the
Speaker 2: American School in London, from which he graduated in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty eight. By then, of course, a bloody and authoritarian
Speaker 2: regime called the New Order was emerging back in Indonesia
Speaker 2: after two years of mass killing of supposed leftists, orchestrated
Speaker 2: and executed by General Suharto, the Indonesian military and supported
Speaker 2: by Western allies. Facing a country economically in tatters, now
Speaker 2: purged of its artists, writers, thinkers, scientists and scholars, President
Speaker 2: Suharto called doctor Sumitro back home. As Sumitro took up
Speaker 2: the reins as trade minister. Probo entered the Military Academy
Speaker 2: or ACABRI in Magalung in nineteen seventy but graduated a
Speaker 2: year later than his cohort in nineteen seventy four after
Speaker 2: being held back for disciplinary reasons. Probo also stood out because,
Speaker 2: at the time, enrolling in the Indonesian military was the
Speaker 2: fallback option for the sons of Indonesia's poor, not its
Speaker 2: erudite blue bloods. These were determinative years for the ny
Speaker 2: orders military the Armed Forces of the Republic of Indonesia
Speaker 2: otherwise known as UBRI, which produced key generals such as
Speaker 2: future President Susilo Bambangiudiono and future ABRI head General Uranto.
Speaker 2: More importantly, these graduating years vastly dwarfed any future cohort,
Speaker 2: producing a crop of ambitious soldiers whose fight for the
Speaker 2: spoils of power would spark an intra elite competition that
Speaker 2: would go on to shape the course of Indonesia's political history.
Speaker 2: Like many of the authoritarian militaries of this period, Abri
Speaker 2: was the dominant coercive institution of the regime. It expected
Speaker 2: to govern and to reap profits. Its expanded role in
Speaker 2: political and economic life was known as due funksi or
Speaker 2: dual function. Abri held a quarter of the seats in
Speaker 2: the National and Regional Parliament, as well as in the
Speaker 2: People's Consultative Assembly, which under the New Order appointed the
Speaker 2: president in five year terms. Green shirts, the name people
Speaker 2: called the army on the streets, were spread through the
Speaker 2: New Order administration as minister's in cabinet, director generals of
Speaker 2: the bureaucracy, ambassadors, and provincial governors. A key plank in
Speaker 2: ABRI's power was and continues to be its territorial structure.
Speaker 2: This is known as the Kodam structure or Military Regional Commands,
Speaker 2: which slices the country into fifteen regions and essentially places
Speaker 2: a military command of corresponding size at every tier of
Speaker 2: regional government right down to the village level. It is
Speaker 2: a structure that snubs territorial borders to face inwards, guarding
Speaker 2: the regime against treachery and oppositional forces. This structure reflected
Speaker 2: ABRI's true purpose to maintain internal security and defend the
Speaker 2: new order from dissent. But this structure also led to
Speaker 2: unparal leelled economic clout, creating opportunities for military businesses to
Speaker 2: dominate the extraction of natural resources and for generals to
Speaker 2: open up joint ventures with aspiring economic magnates. In this way,
Speaker 2: Indonesia's emerging bourgeoisie was deeply intertwined with military power. A
Speaker 2: young ambitious general then as now would expect a slow
Speaker 2: series of rotations and promotions circulating around this territorial command,
Speaker 2: currying political and private sector support before finally obtaining their
Speaker 2: first gold star as general. As the outside graduating cohorts
Speaker 2: of nineteen sixty eight to nineteen seventy coursed through the command,
Speaker 2: plump positions became increasingly contested with shorter tenure times marked
Speaker 2: by rapacious extraction. While impost prabol by contrast, was outside
Speaker 2: of this structure. He was one of the few to
Speaker 2: build his career in the military special forces known as capassos,
Speaker 2: specializing in covert operations, insurgency, intelligence, and psychological warfare. Probo
Speaker 2: joined Kopasus upon graduation a year before Indonesia's annexation of
Speaker 2: Timor Leste. Timor would go on to shape much of
Speaker 2: his career, honing his counter insurgency skills and building him
Speaker 2: a loyal power base that has followed him all the
Speaker 2: way to the presidential palace in nineteen eighty three fall
Speaker 2: until the armed wing of Timor's resistance movement orchestrated a lavuntamento,
Speaker 2: a bloody collapse of the nineteen eighty three ceasefire triggered
Speaker 2: by the massacre of eighteen Abri soldiers by Timur's auxiliaries
Speaker 2: to the platoon. The Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation
Speaker 2: in timor Leste produced a report known as Chega of
Speaker 2: the Occupation. In it, it documents how Koppasus and in particular,
Speaker 2: the Chandracha eight anti terror unit, jointly established by Probo
Speaker 2: and the current Minister for Maritime Affairs, General Luhut Panjaitan,
Speaker 2: was instrumental in managing the fallout, killing and disappearing over
Speaker 2: five hundred and thirty people, including two bloody massacres of
Speaker 2: dozens of women and children surrendering on the slopes of
Speaker 2: Mount Bibliaeo. Chandracha eight also kept civilians imprisoned in a
Speaker 2: concentration camp at caralek Mutin in Craras, where four or
Speaker 2: five people died of hunger each day. By nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: as Abri sought new methods to defeat the Timeri's resistance,
Speaker 2: Kopassus had become the central pillar of the military occupation.
Speaker 2: Now married to President Suharto's daughter Citi Hediardi Hariati known
Speaker 2: as Tittet, Prabol was back in Java, heading the Kopasas
Speaker 2: three training center in Battuljajar, West Java, which Douglas Cammon
Speaker 2: of the National University of Singapore has called the Nerve
Speaker 2: Center for Timor operations. Here, Prabol, who had graduated at
Speaker 2: the top of his class from US military anti terror
Speaker 2: training in Fort Bragg, West Germany and Fort Benning, schooled
Speaker 2: soldiers in propaganda, terror, kidnapping, and sabotage. Throughout the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 2: Probo and by default, Copassus, was the lynchpin of the U.
Speaker 2: S Indonesia military relationship, able to connect the U S
Speaker 2: Armed forces to other areas of Abri and indeed to
Speaker 2: the inner Suharto circle to the United States and other allies.
Speaker 2: Probo was an especially valued contact given the large scale
Speaker 2: personnel changes in the Indonesian military command as the military
Speaker 2: tried to accommodate its bloated upper echelons. But Probo was
Speaker 2: a field man through and through. As Camen has observed,
Speaker 2: for probo Is Timor was like home. Timoor was Proboa's
Speaker 2: laboratory for managing political insurgency, producing techniques that were replicated
Speaker 2: in bloody operations that targeted civilian populations in Arche and
Speaker 2: West Papua. He would be spotted on the streets of Dili,
Speaker 2: having simply turned up without command knowledge or approval. He
Speaker 2: learned to cultivate and mobilized civilian militia who would not
Speaker 2: only provide surveillance on the ground, but could disorder and
Speaker 2: terrorize popular movements. Amongst his many proteges was Euiko Quteres,
Speaker 2: whom he plucked out to run the Guard of Depaksi
Speaker 2: or Youth Guard for Integration. This civilian militia was ostensibly
Speaker 2: a youth employment agency, but really provided the military with
Speaker 2: intelligence and captured local criminal rackets. Gutes was ultimately indicted
Speaker 2: by the UN Special Panels for serious crimes for crimes
Speaker 2: against humanity as head of the Aitarak pro Integration militia
Speaker 2: group in the wake of Tiamoor's vote for independence. Provos
Speaker 2: strategy of cultivating ultra nationalists, criminal gangs, hardline Islamist militia groups,
Speaker 2: and most incredibly, his own former human rights victims as
Speaker 2: a spoiler are a motive of his career, repeated in
Speaker 2: the Melee of nineteen eighty eight, in his twenty fourteen
Speaker 2: and twenty nineteen presidential campaigns, and throughout the two Quo
Speaker 2: two movement in twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen to agitate
Speaker 2: against the Jacoi government. Another tactic Probol sharpened and timor
Speaker 2: was the orchestration of crises to destabilize rivals and consolidate
Speaker 2: his grasp on power. Scholars have long argued that Probo
Speaker 2: had a hand in the nineteen ninety one Santa Cruz massacre,
Speaker 2: where at least two hundred and fifty tea Mories were
Speaker 2: murdered after Indonesian soldiers inexplicably opened fire before an international audience.
Speaker 2: Factional rivals were purged soon after. Similarly, in July nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety six, as head of Capassus, Probo and his coterie
Speaker 2: including Shafri Samsudin, Zaki Makarim, and Mukti Puruo Pranjono were
Speaker 2: accused of involvement in the takeover of a free speech
Speaker 2: forum run by the opposition party Megawati Sukrabno Putri. This
Speaker 2: sparked a two day mass riot. In the fallout, the
Speaker 2: Probole faction was able to depose rivals from top military posts,
Speaker 2: capture kiy milllilitary positions, and initiate a restructuring of Kopassus,
Speaker 2: which provided Probol with his second military star. Flanked by
Speaker 2: his wife Titet, who herself ruled over an empire of
Speaker 2: toll roads, sat in cabinet and served as deputy chairperson
Speaker 2: of the regime's political party, Golkar. Probol seemed destined to
Speaker 2: be the anointed successor to the aging President Suharto, but
Speaker 2: then came the nineteen ninety seven Asian financial crisis, which
Speaker 2: hit Indonesia hard. Within six months, the repair was worth
Speaker 2: thirty percent of its previous value. As the economic crisis
Speaker 2: churned into a social and political revolution, Prabo allegedly amplified
Speaker 2: the anti regime unrest fomenting on the streets by instigating
Speaker 2: anti Chinese riots along the north coast of Central and
Speaker 2: East Java and later in the heart of the capital
Speaker 2: to disgrace his rival, General Wuranto, the head of the
Speaker 2: military in Jakarta. As waves of protests royaled the capital,
Speaker 2: Proboa formed a copassus crack team known as tim Mawar
Speaker 2: or the Rose Team, which kidnapped dozens of student demonstrators
Speaker 2: in three waves from the streets. Prabo and the Rose
Speaker 2: Team took responsibility for the second group of abductions, people
Speaker 2: who were tortured but eventually released. The young people disappeared
Speaker 2: in the first and third waves have never reappeared. On
Speaker 2: May twelfth, nineteen ninety eight, as the city reached boiling point,
Speaker 2: four students at Trisakti University were shot and killed by
Speaker 2: unknown security forces stationed on a flyover road. The deaths
Speaker 2: remained shrouded in mystery. Not only were the students engaged
Speaker 2: in peaceful campus protest, but Trusakti University was a private
Speaker 2: tertiary institution attended by Jakata's ridge Kits, who were late
Speaker 2: comers to the wider reform movement. Prabol continues to deny
Speaker 2: allegations that his men were responsible. Nonetheless, the Trisakti killings
Speaker 2: sent the crisis into free fall. In the days leading
Speaker 2: up to Suharto's resignation on the twenty first of May.
Speaker 2: He assumed that the Indonesian military would step in to
Speaker 2: reassume power, but the years of backlogged promotions and rotations
Speaker 2: had fragmented ABRI's upper echelonce and soured them on prolonging
Speaker 2: the new order. Into the breach stepped a Probol, ally
Speaker 2: Vice President b J. Habibi, who assumed the presidency. This
Speaker 2: was Probo's moment to force history. That same day, according
Speaker 2: to Habibi's autobiography, Prabol demanded he promote the Army chief
Speaker 2: General Subagio Hadisis Warwar to command it in chief of Abri,
Speaker 2: and Probol himself to Army chief of Staff. Instead, Habibi
Speaker 2: snubbed the probole faction by handing the top job to
Speaker 2: his arch rival Wiranto. Infuriated, Probol led a party of
Speaker 2: Copasus loyalists to Habibi's home, but Habibi got wind of
Speaker 2: his plans and was quickly airlifted to the presidential palace
Speaker 2: for safety. After being hauled before a military honor board
Speaker 2: to testify on the student abductions in August nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 2: Prabol was forced to retire soon after. He went into
Speaker 2: exile in Jordan at the invitation of his old fort
Speaker 2: Benningchum King Abdul the second. Other ports of call, such
Speaker 2: as the United States, barred the former general from entry.
Speaker 2: Probola himself discovered this in two thousand when he tried
Speaker 2: to attend his son's graduation. In twenty twenty, the US
Speaker 2: lifted span after Probol was made Defense Minister in the
Speaker 2: Jacobi cabinet. Australia and the United Kingdom, which do not
Speaker 2: formally retain blacklists, also quietly dissuaded any visa implications, although
Speaker 2: since twenty fourteen Australia has allowed Probol to return.
Speaker 1: Coming up after the break, What does Indonesia's new president
Speaker 1: mean for the future of the country.
Speaker 2: For many in Indonesia, these facts of Proboa's history are
Speaker 2: old news recap so many times that they've lost their
Speaker 2: political punch. Indeed, few political careers are as well documented
Speaker 2: as his. Yet how Indonesia's current president a mass close
Speaker 2: to two hundred million Australian dollars in personal wealth has
Speaker 2: never been clear. In two thousand, Probo purchased Kiani Kirtas,
Speaker 2: a pulp and paper company accused of illegal logging, formerly
Speaker 2: owned by Suharto Krony Bob Hassan. He rebranded it Nusantara
Speaker 2: Energy shortly after returning to Indonesia in two thousand and one. Today,
Speaker 2: through Nusantara Corp. Co. Owned with his younger brother, Hashim Probo,
Speaker 2: has investments in pulp and paper, forestry, agriculture, mining, and
Speaker 2: commercial fishing, all sectors targeted by his government's big push
Speaker 2: for energy and food sufficiency. Indeed, much of the Jojo
Speaker 2: Hadikusumo fortune has been generated by Hushim, the family tycoon,
Speaker 2: who use Probos regime connections to extend the family's economic empire.
Speaker 2: In the mid nineteen nineties, Hushim and his sister in law,
Speaker 2: Titek Probol's wife, were the Indonesian partners in the Payton
Speaker 2: I Project, a massive coal fired power complex in East
Speaker 2: Java that The Wall Street Journal then described as one
Speaker 2: of the most expensive power deals of the decade anywhere.
Speaker 2: Peyton One sought to charge the state electricity company a
Speaker 2: markup of between thirty and forty percent. In this way,
Speaker 2: Hushim is as Australian scholars Edward Aspinall and Marcus Meats
Speaker 2: to have written a product of the Suharto regime's ability
Speaker 2: to transform the members of leading bureaucratic families into apex capitalists.
Speaker 2: In the wake of the Asian financial crisis, Hushim pursued
Speaker 2: investments in the Middle East and North Asia while living
Speaker 2: in one of the family villas in Geneva. Those villas
Speaker 2: have now been repossessed in lieu of over US one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty eight million in unpaid tax to the
Speaker 2: Swiss government. In two thousand and six, Hushim cashed out
Speaker 2: his share in Kazakh oil assets to China International Trust
Speaker 2: for a whopping one point nine billion US dollars, some
Speaker 2: of which he spent on his brother's presidential campaigns like
Speaker 2: Nusantara Energy. Hushim's Asari Group deals in Indonesian natural resource
Speaker 2: extraction and processing, palm oil, rubber, tin, pulp and paper,
Speaker 2: bioethanol agribusiness, and is worth nearly a billion US dollars.
Speaker 2: Hashim has also invested heavily in scholarly efforts to rehabilitate
Speaker 2: the legacy of the Jojo Hadi Kasumo name. He does
Speaker 2: this by supporting historical research and films about the family's legacy.
Speaker 2: Oh and funding is too much in Tiger sanctuary the
Speaker 2: acquisition dujou of Indonesia's moguls. But Hushim is not just
Speaker 2: the family's financier. Prabo's younger brother is also the architect
Speaker 2: of its pivot to electoral politics. The party that Probo
Speaker 2: ostensibly leads, Garindra or the Greater Indonesia Party, was supposedly
Speaker 2: Hushim's idea. The party's origin story is wild a brain
Speaker 2: wave hatched in the back of a cab between Hushim,
Speaker 2: then on trial for stealing Javanese artifacts, and the inflammatory
Speaker 2: former Islamic student activist Fudley Zon, another of Probo's Copasis
Speaker 2: area cultivations, railing with indignation. Together, they agreed, according to
Speaker 2: the party's website, that democracy had been hijacked by irresponsible
Speaker 2: actors with large amounts of capital, the result being was
Speaker 2: that the little people just became a tool of elite interests.
Speaker 2: In fact, they said, anyone who doesn't have political and
Speaker 2: economic power can become a victim to these elite interests,
Speaker 2: and one such victim was Hushim himself. Absent from this
Speaker 2: origin story is Girindra's historical roots in Perindra, the Greater
Speaker 2: Indonesia Party, a little known political party, established in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty six by Prabo and Hushian's grandfather Margono and a
Speaker 2: group of conservative Indonesian nationalists. While other nationalist parties were
Speaker 2: shaped by more radical ideological visions of social democracy or Marxism,
Speaker 2: Perindra was the intellectual product of the Leyden School, a
Speaker 2: cohort of organicist legal scholars who believed that Indonesian culture
Speaker 2: was essentially harmonious and consensual, and that these traditions should
Speaker 2: be echoed in the country's political and legal institutions. Although
Speaker 2: support for Perindra eventually collapsed, the party never quite having
Speaker 2: lived down its reputation for re enacting Nazi ceremonials. The
Speaker 2: ideological currents of organicism were key to the resilience of
Speaker 2: Suharto's particular brand of authoritarian rule. Organicism was the rationale
Speaker 2: behind the new orders highly centralized and militarized machinery, its
Speaker 2: compression of civil society into a few state chartered corporatus bodies,
Speaker 2: its sacralization of the state ideology of panchasila. Organicism was
Speaker 2: also behind the regime's pathological obsession with romanticized representations of
Speaker 2: Javanese village life and its self projection as a family
Speaker 2: state over which the benevolent patriarch Suharto would always preside.
Speaker 2: Prabo and Hushim founded Garindra like Perindra, with a small
Speaker 2: cohort of Islamists, capitalists and military generals, including Probo's long
Speaker 2: time capacits loyalists Shafri and Mukdi. Mukti, somehow had emerged
Speaker 2: unscathed from a two thousand eight trial in which he
Speaker 2: was accused of ordering the murder of a human rights activist,
Speaker 2: Munir Sai Dalib, who was poisoned on a flight to
Speaker 2: Amsterdam in two thousand four. In its early years, Garinda
Speaker 2: was credited for attracting bright, young talent whose political aspirations
Speaker 2: had been curtailed by Indonesia's cartel party system. But following
Speaker 2: the twenty fourteen elections, the party has become more solidly
Speaker 2: a family affair. While Hushim's son Ario has given up
Speaker 2: his parliamentary seat to return to Asari Group, Hushim's daughter Saraswati,
Speaker 2: her husband Harwendro, and a nephew of Hashim and Prabor,
Speaker 2: Buddhi Jiuandno the child of their sister Bianti, are all
Speaker 2: elected members. In the National Parliament. Harwendro and Buddhi are
Speaker 2: members in the seats in which the Jojohandikosumas have natural
Speaker 2: resource interests. In addition, Harwendro has secured the role of
Speaker 2: Deputy chair of the powerful Legislative Commission that oversees agriculture, Environment,
Speaker 2: forestry and maritime affairs. The other son of Bianti, Thomas
Speaker 2: jiuandno Is Gurindra's treasurer and a member of the tiny
Speaker 2: fistful of six Gurindra Confidence who made up Probo's Transition
Speaker 2: task Force. In July twenty twenty four, before the Proboa
Speaker 2: government was inaugurated, Thomas was promoted by ben President Jakoe
Speaker 2: to the second Deputy Minister or of Finance, where he
Speaker 2: remains today. We are likely to see more of the
Speaker 2: Jojohdi Kasumbo clan take up chairs in Probo's government. We
Speaker 2: might well shrug Garindra off as just another vehicle for
Speaker 2: Indonesian dynasty, like Megawati Sukardinal Putri's Democratic Party of Struggle
Speaker 2: otherwise known as the PDIP or Socilo Bambang Yudiorno's Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: But Garindra's manifesto is more than the usual blur of
Speaker 2: religious nationalist guff It argues for a return to the
Speaker 2: original nineteen forty five Indonesian constitution as a necessary correction
Speaker 2: to the democratic reforms of the REFORMACI movement, which they
Speaker 2: allege have generated national political instability and slowed economic development.
Speaker 2: What Indonesia needs, reckons Girindra, is a purification of the
Speaker 2: current economic and political system to reflect the identity and
Speaker 2: soul of Indonesia. That is, the democratic principles of contestation,
Speaker 2: opposition and dissent should be replaced with traditional Javanese customs
Speaker 2: of harmony and consensus based decision making. Thus, the pledge
Speaker 2: to re implement an original presidential system of government as
Speaker 2: detailed in Garindris Manifesto, is about winding back direct presidential
Speaker 2: and regional head elections in favor of a centralized system
Speaker 2: in which the People's Consultative Assembly appoints the president. The
Speaker 2: president appoints his lackeys in the provinces. A handful of
Speaker 2: parties demarcate the boundaries of political contestation, and Indonesia's brave
Speaker 2: and effervescent civil society is whittled back down to a
Speaker 2: few state sanctioned representatives of Panchasilla diversity. For many, Proboa's
Speaker 2: election as president marks the resurrection of new order authoritarianism
Speaker 2: by a forgetful, young electorate. For others, it is another
Speaker 2: manifestation of the Trumpian right wing populism currently sweeping the globe.
Speaker 2: Both arguments are mistaken. Voter turnout rates in Indonesia are
Speaker 2: reliably above eighty percent at the national level and around
Speaker 2: seventy percent for regional elections. Frankly, Indonesians relish the opportunity
Speaker 2: to pick their governments and to kick them out. For
Speaker 2: all the evidence of dirty money and candidate vote buying,
Speaker 2: Indonesians still regard policy platforms and performance in government as
Speaker 2: the main basis for their voting preferences. This is a
Speaker 2: country that loves its democracy and its freedoms, despite the
Speaker 2: system's many flaws. Having failed to win a popular mandate
Speaker 2: for a more pure implementation of the presidential system, as
Speaker 2: Garindra argues in twenty fourteen and twenty nineteen, Prabo has
Speaker 2: stepped up again to force history through a strategy of
Speaker 2: elite negotiation. He and his coalitions seized on Jocoe's craven
Speaker 2: ambitions for his family and legacy and his tempestuous relationship
Speaker 2: with his nominating party, Megawatti's PDIP to court the outgoing president.
Speaker 2: Probol himself was rumoured to have first dangled the prospect
Speaker 2: of the vice presidency to Jacoe's firstborn Gibran rakabuming Raka.
Speaker 2: During the twenty twenty four campaign, Probol shed his nationalist
Speaker 2: Safari suits, the horses in dressage, the Mussolini cosplay of
Speaker 2: his twenty fourteen and twenty nineteen campaigns for workshirts that
Speaker 2: mirrored Jacoe's presidential uniform. The roaring, hypermasculine speeches lambasting the
Speaker 2: elite forces that would destroy the country were gone. Instead,
Speaker 2: his answers on policy were distinctly Beta mail, asserting continuity
Speaker 2: and taking care to reassure the electorate that the president's
Speaker 2: prized white elephant, the construction of the new capital, would continue.
Speaker 2: While Gurindra shut down questions about its manifesto, the Indonesian
Speaker 2: public were presented with a chubby avatar, cushioned from the
Speaker 2: prickly questions of journalists by a gaggle of YouTube and
Speaker 2: TikTok influences who pushed this cuddly uncle as their presidential pick.
Speaker 2: Jacoe used his presidential powers to pork barrel and key constituencies.
Speaker 2: Jacoe annex legal and judicial institutions to harass and disable
Speaker 2: rival coalitions, and deployed the National Police to twist the
Speaker 2: arm of potential dissenters and sources of opposition. The effect
Speaker 2: was a decisive win to the pro Bol Gibran pairing
Speaker 2: with fifty eight percent in the first round, though Gurindra's
Speaker 2: contest for the House of Representatives only yielded a middling
Speaker 2: thirteen percent of seats. Having been gifted a nascent authoritarian
Speaker 2: state architecture by the outgoing President, Probo and his political
Speaker 2: allies will seek to institutionalize a model of Indonesian state organicism.
Speaker 2: Probol's strategy is to seek a new deal amongst Indonesia's elites,
Speaker 2: in which they will govern through an expansive coalition that will,
Speaker 2: as far as politically possible, consolidate their power and limit
Speaker 2: the scope of political competition and dissent. This is the
Speaker 2: reason Probole opens every speech with long and elaborate salutations
Speaker 2: to every dignitary in the room. This is what the
Speaker 2: former general means when he reminds his audiences again and
Speaker 2: again that the failure or success of a civilization hinges
Speaker 2: on the unity of its elite classes, while power will
Speaker 2: be exercised through a fistful of loyalists and cabinet. Probol
Speaker 2: seeks to build a regime that will nonetheless be underpinned
Speaker 2: by an outsized governing coalition satiated by the grubby politics
Speaker 2: of divvying up the spoils for elites. The carrot in
Speaker 2: this strategy is the reassertion of the state as a
Speaker 2: mechanism for natural resource extraction and as a distributor of
Speaker 2: their market share. This is what Probol gestures to with
Speaker 2: his big policy platform of national energy and food self sufficiency,
Speaker 2: packaged within the infeasible populism of free school lunches. Probol's
Speaker 2: model of food security envisions the conversion of millions of
Speaker 2: hectares of forested land over twelve million hectares of degraded rainforest,
Speaker 2: as Hashim is wont to repeat into vast monolithic food plantations.
Speaker 2: It doesn't really matter that so far, his involvement of
Speaker 2: the proposal to build food estates across eight hundred thousand
Speaker 2: hectares of forest and peatland in North Sumatra, Central Kalimantan
Speaker 2: and Papua has ended in failure, Probo is, in essence,
Speaker 2: proposing a colossal land grab from which plantation permits, supply chains,
Speaker 2: and food and energy processing monopolies will be doled out
Speaker 2: to a waiting brood of domestic conglomerates, tech billionaires, ex
Speaker 2: military and intelligence stars, resource hungry oligarchs, dynasties, and party apparatchicks.
Speaker 2: Seen in this light, Probo's regular exhortations for food and
Speaker 2: energy sovereignty are a clarion call to Indonesia's elie to
Speaker 2: regroup around a new political economy of natural wealth extraction,
Speaker 2: one in which every early interest is invested, everyone gets
Speaker 2: their bit, and most importantly, everyone knows their place on
Speaker 2: the stump. Probo's voice cracks with woe when he describes
Speaker 2: how his free lunch program will relieve the grinding hunger
Speaker 2: of Indonesia's little people, reiterating his dedication to ameliorate the
Speaker 2: suffering of ordinary Indonesians, so far so nobless oblige. Elsewhere,
Speaker 2: Probo has offered up uncanny accounts of people dying of
Speaker 2: starvation by his tent on the mountain slopes of Timor,
Speaker 2: presumably in the concentration camps he established and ran as
Speaker 2: the emotional fodder for his food security program. There are
Speaker 2: many problems with this strategy, but the main one is
Speaker 2: there's not much in it for the kind of country
Speaker 2: Indonesia has become. Poverty rates have dropped from forty percent
Speaker 2: to twenty percent of the population since the early two thousands.
Speaker 2: Extreme poverty Indisdonesia is certainly a problem, but it now
Speaker 2: stands at ten percent. Indonesia's economic and social policy making
Speaker 2: now needs to reckon with the rise of an enormous
Speaker 2: class of what has been described as the working non poor,
Speaker 2: who aspire to social mobility but are trapped in cycles
Speaker 2: of financial procarity and insecurity. Probos's most loyal voting base
Speaker 2: come from this very stratum, the youths educated at high
Speaker 2: school and university who are deeply frustrated by the gap
Speaker 2: between the promises of development and the low paid, low
Speaker 2: skilled jobs that Jacoe's middle income Indonesia could provide. Indonesia
Speaker 2: is not, and indeed has never been, the docile population
Speaker 2: of peasants of PROBOS imagining. Over the past twenty five
Speaker 2: years of democratic reformacy, Indonesia has become a deeply unequal,
Speaker 2: digital savvy, highly urbanized, geographically mobile, and politically organized middle
Speaker 2: income country in need of an economic industrial strategy that
Speaker 2: can generate sustained employment with a more egalitarian distribution of wealth, life,
Speaker 2: and opportunity. This is the policy golden goose that would
Speaker 2: require a massive deconstruction of the very political and economic
Speaker 2: system that has elevated the Jojo Hadi Kusumo's to power.
Speaker 2: Probo's feudal representations of his populace need to be seen
Speaker 2: for what they are, a pregame strategy through which dissenters
Speaker 2: and oppositional figures can be attacked as foreign stooges or
Speaker 2: anti government meddlers, unrepresentative of the true moral majority, whose
Speaker 2: aspirations should be as modest as their social status. But
Speaker 2: what happens when Indonesia's people express rights instead of gratitude?
Speaker 2: We should expect that Probo, a blue blood who has
Speaker 2: for decades fermented in his own briny destiny, will not
Speaker 2: shy from forcing history once again. What does this mean
Speaker 2: for us? Why should Australia's foreign policy thinkers and decision
Speaker 2: make his care about the prospect of a further dissent
Speaker 2: towards authoritarianism under President Prabaul. Certainly our administration didn't so
Speaker 2: much as Flicker as the coalition aligned with Jacoe harassed
Speaker 2: Indonesia's journalists, civil rights activists, and academics with junk defamation cases.
Speaker 2: Over the two terms of Jacoe's presidency, we have been
Speaker 2: untroubled by his government's silencing and displacement of Indonesia's reformers
Speaker 2: and professionals on the Constitutional Court, the Audit Board, the
Speaker 2: Judicial Commission, the General Elections Commission, and Indonesia's prized Corruption
Speaker 2: Eradication Commission. We have witnessed Indonesia's civil space become whittled thin.
Speaker 2: After all, as staffers at the Department of Foreign Affairs
Speaker 2: and Trade have asked me, what does Indonesia's declining civil
Speaker 2: and political rights record got to do with Australia's trade
Speaker 2: and foreign policy. The short answer is that these political
Speaker 2: dynamics have grave consequences for Indonesia's ability to provide the
Speaker 2: predictabilis rule of law and due process necessary to Indonesia,
Speaker 2: Australia and our common prosperity. Australia has done much to
Speaker 2: build and support cohorts of professionals and bureaucrats committed to
Speaker 2: bringing about good governance and a more equitable rule of
Speaker 2: law through technical support and by opening up opportunities for
Speaker 2: mutual learning and exchange. This is important work, but in
Speaker 2: itself it is not enough. A response to Indonesia's democracy
Speaker 2: trouble must lie in our clear eyed recognition that with
Speaker 2: this election, ordinary Indonesians have not voted for the organicist manifesto,
Speaker 2: that the probole camp will now agitate to install. Indonesians
Speaker 2: in fact cherish their democracy and have no intention of
Speaker 2: surrendering it to oligarchy. Since reformacy, Australia has largely equated
Speaker 2: supporting Indonesian democracy with helping Indonesians to build institutions or
Speaker 2: produce good policies. Twenty six years on from indoniae USO's
Speaker 2: democratic transition. Plainly this was wrong. Democracy is not merely
Speaker 2: a technical matter sealed up in good institutions. Rather, the
Speaker 2: health of a democracy should be measured in the space
Speaker 2: it permits for popular participation and contestation. In every democracy,
Speaker 2: that space must be pride open and defended anew by writers, journalists, workers, artists, activists, bureaucrats, economists, unionists, landholders, farmers, fishermen, environmentalists, lawyers, teachers, accountants, doctors, scientists,
Speaker 2: and scholars. In Indonesia. These groups have long been on
Speaker 2: the backfoot, especially during the consolidation of the national elite
Speaker 2: under the Chacoi presidency. Australia's shift from development aid to
Speaker 2: a broader platform of engagement and partnership with Indonesia means
Speaker 2: that we are well placed to help sustain these groups
Speaker 2: by providing opportunities that value and advance their work. We
Speaker 2: should ward against anything so instrumentalist as policy reform. Instead,
Speaker 2: we could support these groups by connecting them to each
Speaker 2: other and to Australian partnerships through fellowships, residencies and study exchanges,
Speaker 2: and providing the platforms to elevate and promote high quality work.
Speaker 2: We need to provide these vital social groups with avenues
Speaker 2: of respite from regime pressure, as well as create paths
Speaker 2: for them to further their standing for Australia. Supporting Indonesian
Speaker 2: democracy means rethinking out often managerialists and risk adverse engagement
Speaker 2: with Indonesia so that we better support the groups to
Speaker 2: exercise fundamental norms including collective organizing and action, scientific expertise,
Speaker 2: academic and journalistic freedom, artistic license, bureaucratic independence, and other
Speaker 2: ethical and professional standards as nations. We have been here before.
Speaker 2: Beneath a sometimes fickle political and economic relationship, Australia and
Speaker 2: Indonesia share an informal history, often forgotten, in which ordinary
Speaker 2: people forge genuine networks of camaraderie across a shared geography.
Speaker 2: The Australian government likes to refer to this as people
Speaker 2: to people relations, but the phrase diminishes the richness of
Speaker 2: the relations of care, curiosity, and solidarity that have bonded
Speaker 2: our nations. Unions, universities, media outlets, galleries and civil society
Speaker 2: organizations have provided shelter and sustenance to Indonesia's cause during
Speaker 2: their long struggle for independence, after the bloody killings of
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five, and most notably during the long dark
Speaker 2: years of the authoritarian New Order. To confront Indonesia's political future.
Speaker 2: It is to this shared history that we must return.
Speaker 1: That was Jackie Baker reading her story Forcing History. For
Speaker 1: more of Australia's best long form writing, visit Australian Foreign
Speaker 1: Affairs dot com. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: Let see you tomorrow.