Indonesia at a crossroads

I recently spent two weeks travelling in Indonesia during the run-up to yesterday’s presidential election. Never has one in Indonesia been so polarising, or so high-stakes, with an outcome that was almost too close to call. Joko Widodo (known as “Jokowi”), the populist grassroots politician, is the presumed winner by almost five percentage points, although his rival Prabowo Subianto has fought back with his own declaration of victory.

I was wary of Prabowo from the very start, given his background as a military strongman and the fervent nationalist rhetoric in his campaign. Posters around the country proclaimed INDONESIA BANGKIT! (“Rise up, Indonesia!”), and added that voting for him would be the “patriotic” choice. Others suggested that Prabowo’s leadership would pave the way for Indonesia to become a new Asian Tiger.

But Prabowo has a chequered past that he has never accounted for in public. Throughout his military career, he has served in Kopassus, the Indonesian Special Forces, responsible for an untold number of human rights abuses in occupied East Timor. In 1978, as a 26-year-old lieutenant, Prabowo led the mission to capture the fledgling nation’s first president, Nicolau dos Reis Lobato.

The statesman was found, ambushed and killed, his body taken to Dili and photographed by the media. In the 1990s Prabowo played a vital role in attempts to stamp out East Timor’s independence movement, using Kopassus-trained militia to terrorise and hunt out supporters under cover of darkness.