Indonesia is electing a new president on 14 February, with citizens of the world’s third-largest democracy heading to the polls in a huge day of voting and festivities.
The current president, Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi, has been in power since 2014 but will not be returning to the top job due to term limits.
Three candidates are vying to become the next president, with Prabowo Subianto, the current defence minister, leading the polls and looking likely to be the next leader of the country. Prabowo’s running mate is vice-presidential candidate Gibran Rakabuming Raka, Jokowi’s eldest son.
The Australian government has signalled its desire for stronger ties with Indonesia. The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, visited the country in June 2022, just weeks after his election victory.
So what does the Indonesian election, and a potential Prabowo presidency, mean for Australia?
Security
Indonesia sits at the heart of one of the most sensitive geopolitical regions in the world and Australia relies on the country to assist with keeping peace in south-east Asia.
Indonesia has maintained a position of non-alignment on foreign policy, looking to engage with the US and Australia, as well as China, a position that is unlikely to change under a Prabowo presidency.
“Part of Prabowo’s whole shtick, his whole campaign, is based on the idea of more of the same, on continuity between his and Jokowi’s policies,” said Prof Justin Hastings from the department of government and international relations at the University of Sydney.
“He’s currently defence minister, so one could expect he’s going to stand by his defence decisions,” said Hastings, including the continued pursuit of friendly relations with Australia, the US and China, and a policy of Asean centrality.
“What might be different is that Prabowo’s personality is significantly different to Jokowi’s,” said Hastings, which will mean foreign partners have “a more difficult time handling him”.
“He doesn’t necessarily take feedback well, he’s changeable, he’s brittle,” he said. “Prabowo is generally OK with having relations with Australia, but Australia needs to understand how to deal with him.”
Trade
Indonesia is now the world’s 14th-largest economy but could reach top-five status by 2040.
On his visit to the country in 2022, Albanese noted that Australia was ranked 13th on the list of Indonesia’s trade partners and that needed to change. “Common sense tells you that that’s the case. We can do much more.”
Dr Hilman Palaon, research fellow, Indo-Pacific Development Centre at Lowy Institute, says the mood from all three presidential candidates is one of “political optimism and [a desire for] good collaboration with Australia”.
He sees all three candidates as looking likely to continue the discussions that Jokowi has been having with the Australian government on trade, including about simplifying visa access to Australia, engaging in Asean collaborations and increasing foreign investment.
“All three of them say they want better trade terms, none of them are anti-Australian in any particular sense,” said Hastings. But he adds that trade policy in Indonesia often oscillates between promoting trade and a more protectionist agenda that requires processing of materials to be done in the country, so as to allow Indonesia to move up the value chain.
“They’ll often try to force countries to do the processing in Indonesia, not just dig it up and ship it out of the country. The cost of that is often very high so that is detrimental to trade. Depending on who’s in power, that will flip back and forth.”
Human rights
Prabowo’s alleged past has some Indonesia watchers alarmed about him becoming president.
The former general was dismissed from the military amid allegations he was involved in kidnapping and torture of pro-democracy activists in the late 1990s, and of rights abuses in Papua and Timor-Leste. Prabowo has always denied any wrongdoing, has never been charged with any offence related to the allegations and accordingly they remain unproven.
The issue of how to deal with him has been complicated for foreign allies. Prabowo was banned from travelling to the US, though this was dropped after he became defence secretary in 2019, something that prompted strong objections from groups such as Amnesty International.
Hastings said that a Prabowo victory would not likely lead to an uptick in human rights abuses across Indonesia but that if elected, Hastings believed it would be unlikely “to see a lot of reckoning with the past”.
One of the most remarkable features of the election campaign has been Prabowo’s successful rebranding from military strongman to “harmless grandpa”.
Prabowo has sought to appeal to Indonesia’s huge youth vote and cultivate a softer, gentler persona, posting videos of himself dancing on TikTok and photos on Instagram of him snuggling with his cat.
“His team tries to use social media [to say] ‘maybe he’s a strongman, a former army general, but he can also do something fun’,” said Palaon.
