Analysis - Indonesia at Melbourne

Prabowo may have just tightened his grip on Nahdlatul Ulama. Has it lost its way?

This alarming trend suggests greater engagement from NU’s grassroots forces is needed to pressure NU elites to maintain the organisation’s past role as a defender of democratic norms and a promoter of civil Islam.

Fiscal recentralization weakens local government capacity

Analysis, Policies

The central government cannot manage every aspect of government from Jakarta. The closer government is to citizens, the better positioned it is to understand and respond to their everyday needs. Local governments know better than Jakarta whether a particular village needs better roads, clean water, waste management, schools, health services, or other forms of basic infrastructure.

Coerced, co-opted: are local media complicit in the rise of TNI in Indonesian villages?

Analysis, Media, Politics, Security

There is no question that the military, especially the army, is expanding fast, building hundreds of battalions across Indonesia and recruiting tens of thousands. What is less obvious is the major role that complicit local media have played in justifying this remilitarisation project.

The smoke is back: has Indonesia unlearned the lessons of its recurring fires?

Analysis, Environment, Policies

The question is not whether the government understands the importance of peat restoration as a key measure to prevent fires. It does. The question is whether it is investing enough — and maintaining what it has already built — to make restoration work.

Indonesia-China naval exercise: is Jakarta falling into Beijing’s Taiwan playbook?

Analysis, Foreign Policy

Indonesia’s decision to conduct military exercises with China therefore shows political insensitivity that may create an unnecessary provocation in the region. It also raises even more fundamental questions about Indonesia’s foreign policy under President Prabowo Subianto.

Beyond Febrie’s scandal: the historical roots of police-prosecutor rivalry

Analysis, Law, Security

In a true rule of law system, checks and balances ensure that no single institution exercises power without restraint. Instead, institutions are expected to monitor, limit and correct one another to prevent abuses of authority. By contrast, under Indonesia’s legal and political system, state institutions are discouraged from interfering with one another’s functions to avoid conflict, embarrassment or public controversy.

Will Perry Warjiyo’s exit mark the end of a reformed Bank Indonesia?

Analysis, Economy

The real question here is not merely whether the next governor possesses technical credentials. It is whether the process results in the appointment of a governor able and willing to defend the rupiah, when doing so requires higher interest rates, tighter liquidity or resistance to government financing, and whether that governor can do so without jeopardising his or her tenure.

Why are more Indonesian university graduates jostling for menial jobs?

Analysis, Economy, Education, Labour

Indonesia now has two familiar images of graduate hardship, each with its own distinctive colour: the graduate in a green ojol (online motorcycle-taxi) jacket, and the graduate in an orange PPSU vest. They are usually told as separate stories. But both point to the same condition: graduates working in jobs that do not require the qualifications they spent years acquiring.

Selected, not shared: what Indonesia's limited dual citizenship proposal reveals about who counts as diaspora

Analysis, Policies, Society

The proposal for limited dual citizenship also appears ironic. It seeks to persuade highly skilled Indonesians overseas to return, yet President Prabowo has repeatedly urged those who are dissatisfied with the government to ‘look for another country’. Such mixed signals help explain why many members of the diaspora remain reluctant to formalise their ties to a state that seems ambivalent about their belonging.

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