Photo from instagram.com/prabowo
President Prabowo Subianto seems to be rebuilding Soeharto’s New Order one piece at a time, reviving a political order that enabled his former father-in-law, Soeharto, to rule the country with an iron fist for more than 30 years.
This claim may sound like a hackneyed cliche. After all, some scholars have played down fears of Prabowo turning Indonesia into an autocracy, citing oligarchic constraints or democratic safeguards. They argue that elite competition will keep Prabowo’s authoritarian tendencies in check.
The question is — what if, far from constraining him, the current oligarchic configuration will enable Prabowo to unleash his wildest autocratic desires?
Indonesia is not sleepwalking into autocracy
Clearly, the former general has not singlehandedly orchestrated Indonesia’s increasing descent into authoritarianism.
Indonesian democracy has long been characterised as illiberal because of its oligarchic nature. By oligarchy I mean a system of power sustained by an alliance of politico-business interests for capital accumulation. Their predatory interests can at times subvert Indonesia’s democratic institutions, with little to no pushback from the people. This is why, after 24 years of Reformasi, Indonesia is classified as only “partly free” by global freedom watchdog Freedom House.
Behind Indonesia’s new democratic institutions there has always lurked a latent capacity for autocracy. Under former president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, once dubbed “Little Soeharto”, Indonesia had already begun democratic reversal. His ten years in power saw the return of illiberal New Order institutions such as the legalisation of military involvement in civilian affairs, and the weaponisation of the state Pancasila ideology (through the Mass Organisation Law).
However, we are now seeing signs that Prabowo’s rise to power has accelerated the ongoing gutting of what is left of Indonesia’s Reformasi institutions, including the expanding role of the military in the government. This is not only because the new president has authoritarian tendencies, but also because his (almost inevitable) election victory reflected the general will of the oligarchy. This was demonstrated by the fact that Prabowo won the backing of by far the largest group of oligarchs in the February election.
It is true that Indonesia’s democracy has come under severe oligarchic pressures that would exist regardless of who won the last presidential election. However, Prabowo seems to have the know-how, and, more importantly, the personal determination, to recreate a socio-political order that closely reflects Soeharto’s Integralistic state — the political model instrumental for the creation and maintenance of his autocratic oligarchic system.
It is not my intention to outline every step taken by Prabowo to bring back Soeharto-style authoritarianism but I will identify three of his major strategies.
Pursuit of political consensus
It is wrong to suggest that intra-elite oligarchic conflicts were non-existent under Soeharto, but he was very effective at managing them – at least until his fall in the late 1990s.
Prabowo, once a key figure in Soeharto’s New Order, knows all too well that intra-elite conflicts could pose a serious threat to his political survival. After all, elite wrangling over the question of who would succeed Soeharto was one of the causes of his abrupt and violent ouster. Elite squabbles also drove the socio-political polarisation that undermined Prabowo’s rival-turned-ally, Jokowi, during the highly divisive 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election and the 2014 and 2019 presidential elections. This explains why Prabowo is so determined to create a broad coalition with little or no room for opposition.
Only recently, Prabowo called for the creation of a ‘permanent coalition’ of political parties to shore up his administration. The proposal came shortly after his re-election as Gerindra Party leader and ahead of his expected nomination as a presidential candidate for the 2029 presidential election.
In fact, Prabowo is already supported by a giant alliance of political parties called the Advance Indonesia Coalition (Koalisi Indonesia Maju, KIM). This consists of all political factions in the House of Representatives (DPR) with the exception only of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). The majority of KIM members, including the Golkar Party (the former political vehicle of Soeharto), have welcomed the idea of a ‘permanent coalition’.
The NasDem Party, which backed the unsuccessful Anies Baswedan in the 2024 presidential election, is the only KIM-Plus party that was non-committal in its response. The PDI-P, the sole formal “opposition” to Prabowo, has also rejected the proposal, saying it will oppose the single-candidate election it expects a permanent coalition will propose. However, both parties, which have had a rocky relationship with each other, account for only 30 percent of the House seats, not enough to resist Prabowo’s plan.
The permanent coalition proposal is clearly meant to address potential intra-elite conflicts ahead of the 2029 presidential election, when every party will be eligible to field its own candidates. This is the result of a recent Constitutional Court decision that scrapped the previous presidential nomination threshold, which had meant only parties or coalitions that had 20% of seats in the DPR, or had won at least 25% of the vote in the previous elections, could nominate a candidate.
If the permanent coalition becomes a reality, the implications are clear: a reduced capacity for the DPR to conduct check and balances. Under Gerindra’s leadership, the DPR has already been dubbed by critics “Kementerian DPR” (the Ministry of the DPR), reminiscent of the subordinate ‘rubber stamp’ DPR of the Soeharto era.
Prabowo’s attempt to create a broad and permanent coalition does not mean that he can please everyone, however. He still has tread carefully in his political manoeuvres.
For example, Prabowo has praised Jokowi and kept the latter’s ambitions to relocate the capital to Kalimantan alive, even if its budget has been cut. But the capital relocation project is decidedly not the priority for him that it was for Jokowi.
Moreover, in a clear power move against his predecessor and his oligarchic backers and a potential courting of the PDI-P’s Megawati Soekarnoputri, Prabowo is cracking down on national projects introduced under Jokowi, including urban development projects in the northern part of Greater Jakarta. One of them is the Tropical Coastland project developed by the Agung Sedayu Group, a major property giant, which leads a group of domestic capitalists investing in Jokowi’s new capital city project.
Absorption of civil society forces
It is telling that despite a series of online and offline demonstrations held by Indonesian students using hashtags such as “Peringatan Darurat” (Emergency Warning) or, more recently, “Indonesia Gelap” (Dark Indonesia), Prabowo’s approval ratings in his first 100 days have been consistently above 80 percent.
Prabowo remains popular despite criticism from pro-democracy activists. In fact, these activists seem to have become less legitimate as spokespeople for the public, with elites often citing high approval ratings for Prabowo and Jokowi to demonstrate a growing gap between elite intellectuals and the people. Prabowo has been quick to portray liberal democracy, along with NGOs who support it, as culturally inappropriate for Indonesia. He has highlighted the need for a “polite democracy” to condemn confrontational political dissent and, by extension, his critics.
Like his former father in law, Soeharto, Prabowo is a populist leader – much more so than Jokowi. His populist policies, including his free meal program, would impress even Sukarno. However, populism alone is not enough to secure the people’s support. Unlike his predecessor, Jokowi, Prabowo has no intention to alienating half of the country by calling them kampret (bats) or kadrun (kadal gurun, or desert lizards), pejorative terms used by pro-Jokowi cybertroopers to describe Prabowo’s supporters and radical Muslims.
Prabowo now has the full backing of both Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, two major Islamic organisations that, between them, represent the majority of Indonesian Muslims. Not only are they given positions in Prabowo’s Cabinet, but both organisations have been granted lucrative coal mining concessions.
Prabowo has also maintained a relatively cordial relationship with paramilitary or preman (gangster) groups in the country, including the notorious Islamic Defenders Front (FPI, now known as the Islamic Brotherhood Front), a pebble in Jokowi’s shoe. This broad (un)civil society support helps give him and his oligarchic backers enough legitimacy to engage in a plethora of predatory policies and discredit political challenges or even technocratic criticism.
Concentration of political and economic powers
The creation of Daya Anagata Nusantara (Danantara) on 24 February 2025 is a case in point.
Danantara, which answers directly to Prabowo, is a superholding company that will manage major state-owned enterprises, with an investment arm that is expected to manage US$900 billion worth of state assets.
It is to Prabowo as the new capital in Kalimantan is to Jokowi. The only difference is that, unlike Jokowi’s capital city, the coal oligarchs are entirely behind Prabowo’s ambitions to make Danantara the country’s economic locomotive.
Rosan is a key coal oligarch who supported both Jokowi’s and Prabowo’s election campaigns. He was also one of the main architects of the controversial 2020 Omnibus Law on Job Creation, enacted chiefly to smooth the accumulation strategy of Indonesia’s extractive capitalists. Pandu, meanwhile, is vice president-director of coal mining firm PT Toba Bara Sejahtera and the nephew of powerful oligarch Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, a key figure in Jokowi’s cabinet who now serves as one of Prabowo’s chief economic advisers.
Prabowo’s decision to finance the sovereign wealth fund through sweeping austerity measures that have slashed the national budget for public services has sparked concerns of unbridled political corruption. His government aims to cut $44 billion and channel $20 billion of it to Danantara.
The implications of this potentially predatory economic policy could be far-reaching. Veteran scholar of the Indonesian oligarchy, Vedi Hadiz, has noted that the creation of Danantara was alarming, as it signifies Prabowo’s attempt at concentrating both political and economic powers.
Prabowo has called on religious organizations, including Muhammadiyah and NU, to supervise Danantara. It is unclear, however, if this means religious leaders would serve as commissioners within the company, which would only weaken their capacity to oversee its operations.
On the other hand, the huge financial resources available to the new investment arm would only further consolidate the political dominance of Prabowo and his oligarchy.
Free, fair and open direct elections are at stake
With the grassroots forces unable to create a cohesive political challenge to the elite, the greatest threat facing Prabowo and the dominant oligarchic faction that supported him (including powerful coal oligarchs and the party leaders of his coalition) would be new and popular presidential contenders contesting the 2029 election, bankrolled by wealthy backers.
They don’t want another oligarchic fight that could put all their interests at risk. The stakes are higher now. Danantara is a political-economic project that Prabowo and his oligarchy can’t afford to let fail.
If Prabowo’s KIM-plus becomes a permanent coalition similar to Malaysia’s Barisan Nasional, as suggested by influential powerbroker Jeffri Geovannie, and if NU and Muhammadiyah maintain their support for Prabowo, it is not impossible that we could actually see the emboldened ruling elite move to end direct elections in the next few years. If that happens, the more or less free, fair and open direct elections Indonesians have enjoyed since Soeharto fell will become a thing of the past.
And if that happens, then we can safely say that Reformasi is over and a new autocratic regime is born. Or perhaps that should be re-born?
