REGIME CHANGE NEEDS MORE THAN BURNING TYRES

Murray Hunter


REGIME CHANGE NEEDS MORE THAN BURNING TYRES

Duncan Graham
Aug 29, 2025






ABSENT - THE 3D ESSENTIALS: DISCIPLINE, DIRECTION AND DETERMINATION

Why did the Jakarta student riots of 1998 succeed in overthrowing the Indonesian government and ousting Soeharto, the nation’s second President, while this week’s public displays of outrage seem doomed to fail.

Soeharto has been in his grave since 2008, but his former son-in-law, Prabowo Subianto (74 this October) is still firmly in charge, digging deeper by boosting the military – the source of his strength.

This is despite being dismissed from its ranks in 1998 for disobeying orders.

He has also been allegedly implicated in human rights abuses during duty tours in East Timor and West Papua, though he has never been charged.

On Monday, tens of thousands of mainly young men were flinging rocks and burning tyres in blocked streets outside the Parliamentary buildings. Some waved pirate-themed flags lifted from the Japanese manga cartoon One Piece, supposedly symbolising rebellion. But spectacles are not results.

For street riots to make a difference in the world’s fourth-largest nation, as in most states where the elite few rule, and the downtrodden majority mumble, several factors need to be present and understood by all participants.

The first is regime fatigue, with ministers idle or corrupt or both, and showing contempt for the electorate.

Prabowo’s seven-party coalition, informally backed by five others under the banner of the Great Indonesia Awakening has yet to reach that point, though it’s heading that way with the arrest for alleged corruption of the Deputy Manpower Minister Immanuel Ebenezer and 13 officials.

He’s a member of Prabowo’s party Gerindra, which leads the Advanced Indonesia Coalition that’s been in power for less than a year – not long enough for resentment to be embedded. When Soeharto was uprooted, he’d been running the Republic for 32 years.

The unkempt kids on the streets this week looked furious, but their mood fell short of the righteous rage of 27 years ago – and they had no outstanding leader to articulate their anger and focus the protest.

That position is essential – and dangerous. It’s not just the mobs that need a front man or woman – so does the government.

Then they can seize that figure and portray them not as a brave agent of change, but a rabble-rouser with a hidden agenda. They should be easy to smear as a paid foreign agent planning to pounce on the naive populace and steal their resources.

That elusive raptor has been flapping around the treetops for some months now, spotted regularly by Prabowo, though by few others.

They can hear its wingbeat but can’t supply a name or its origin – they only know its intent. That one bogeybird can frighten a nation of 285 million is fanciful, but it’s strong enough in a country where superstition and black magic still grip millions, particularly in rural areas.

Indonesia is regularly tagged as having the world’s largest number of Muslims – 88 per cent – but Islam was a latecomer to the archipelago and hasn’t smothered the traditional beliefs that have been in place for millennia.

The hero of the 1998 protests was a university heavyweight, Dr Amien Rais, a US-educated intellectual. He’s now 81 and still involved in public affairs, mainly through Muhammadiyah, the more modern and conservative branch of Islam.

Although no longer potent, he had the status and authority last century to confront Soeharto and his gangsters trying to hang onto power, while leading their opponents. Many were tertiary students who’d thought through their reasons for dissent and weren’t just sheep.

At that time (May 1998), the police were controlled by the army. Lnes of authority and separation of powers were blurred – the military often handling domestic strife. They’re the ones who used live rounds, killing four and injuring many youngsters from the nation’s largest private tertiary educator, the prestigious Trisakti University.

This was more than a human tragedy but a tactical mistake because the students were children of the business oligarchs who run the Indonesian economy. This time the 1,300 “security personnel” used tear gas.

So far there have been no reports of killings and few of injuries.

The crowds had been inflamed by a series of missteps by Prabowo who is proving to be a poor politician but good at shouting to the choir. As reported earlier in Pearls and Irritations, he’s militarising the civilian elected MPs by organising parades and boot camps.

Dressing up in fatigues and wearing boots was first seen as selfie fun, to be tolerated because there were tangible benefits for accepting Prabowo’s fantasies. The most pleasing to the 580 politicians has been a monthly housing allowance of AUD 5,500 atop a salary of double that sum in a country where most incomes are in the hundreds.

Before the riots the House Speaker Puan Maharani, 51, daughter of Megawati Soekarnoputri, 78, the nation’s sixth president and leader of the Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). The centre-left secular-nationalist party claims to be the de facto Opposition, but Puan’s comments make that contestable.

She told journos that the remuneration had been “thoroughly considered and adjusted to current prices in Jakarta.” Her statement didn’t endorse her credentials as a leader of the poor who must now think they are even more unloved, so what to lose by stoning cops?

Everything, because violence adds to Prabowo’s scares of violence and therefore the need for tough guys to be in charge. Excluded from that cohort of uninformed old men (there are only five women in the 48-strong ministry) is the civilian Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka, 38 this year.

In Indonesia, nepotism is as entrenched as corruption.

As the eldest son of the former president Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo, his place as the youth-bait on last year’s election ticket is widely considered the reason for Prabowo’s clear win, 58 per cent in the three-way contest.

But the young man is now seldom seen in public; when he does appear, his smile is forced.

Similar features could be seen in the mobs rioting outside the former businessman’s office in the Parliament. If he’s going to be dislodged, it’s more likely to be by retired vets who have been petitioning Parliament – so far unsuccessfully - than teen gangs.

But Indonesian politics are forever volatile; that keeps them dangerous. The 1998 riots that followed Soeharto’s resignation led to firebombings, an estimated 1,000 killings and 400 rapes of ethnic Chinese women.

A repeat of that unresolved tragedy is the fear of all who watch the present protests.