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1) A Prabowo presidency will be good for Australian interests
Published 20 Jun 2024 Indonesia Australia Follow @maxwalden_
The world’s largest single-day elections, held in February 2024, granted Prabowo Subianto his long-held dream of becoming Indonesian president. Having served as Indonesian defence minister since 2019 under one-time opponent Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, and as the son-in-law of late dictator Suharto, Prabowo is no stranger to elite politics. His father served as a minister under Indonesia’s first president Sukarno as well as Suharto.
Prabowo’s controversial record as a special forces commander is well documented. His rebrand as a cuddly grandpa figure during the 2024 election campaign may not last long. Much has been made of his famous temper.
Fears that Prabowo will set Indonesia’s democracy backwards are not unfounded. He has long advocated a return to the 1945 Constitution, which would strip Indonesian citizens of the right to directly elect their presidents. During the 2024 election campaign, Prabowo repeatedly goaded journalists. At one event he warned media workers: “Be careful, we take note of everything you do.”
His track record in the military and ultranationalist tub thumping understandably makes minorities nervous, particularly ethnic Chinese Indonesians and Papuans. Relations with Timor-Leste under his presidency may not flourish.
However, Prabowo’s interest in foreign relations and promoting himself abroad as a respectable statesman is longstanding.
In stark contrast with Jokowi, Prabowo is comfortable and eloquent speaking English, whether being interviewed on television by foreign media networks or speaking in high-level diplomatic settings, as he did a fortnight ago at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore and last week at an emergency forum on humanitarian aid for Gaza hosted by Jordan.
Where Jokowi often leaned on pop-culture references, once likening the bilateral relationship with Australia to assembled strength of Marvel superhero characters in a speech to the Australian parliament, Prabowo speaks with sophistication on issues of international import.
When I reported on the 2019 presidential elections, Prabowo’s Gerindra Party had a dedicated media officer for foreign journalists – top of her class at Boston University, I was told – who provided near-daily updates in English and was highly responsive to inquiries. Senior staffers from the PDIP meanwhile (then Jokowi’s party and the most electorally successful party in recent decades) did not even respond to my media requests sent in Bahasa Indonesia.
As defence minister, Prabowo visited China regularly. His first foreign visit as president-elect was to Beijing where he met President Xi Jinping, which raised some eyebrows in Western capitals. Yet on the same trip, Prabowo also visited Japan and Malaysia. Given China and Japan are top trade partners and investors in Indonesia, the choice of destinations made sense. Prabowo pledged to strengthen security ties with both.
Prabowo is nothing if not a fierce patriot. It is almost impossible to imagine he will stray from Indonesia’s bebas aktif or “independent and active” diplomatic doctrine, which has dominated since the phrase was first uttered by vice president Mohammad Hatta in 1948. In a Cold War context, that meant the freedom to build relationships with both the Soviet bloc and US-led Western powers. It means much the same today, with China in place of the USSR.
“It’s our tradition, it’s our history that we do not want to belong to any blocs, especially military alliances. Our guiding philosophy is to be friends with all countries,” Prabowo said in an interview with Al Jazeera last month. Regarding tensions with Beijing in the South China Sea, he said: “By diplomacy, by negotiations – what I call the Asian way – we have defused a lot of situations.”
At the same time, Indonesia is pushing to join the OECD. Prabowo plans to modernise the Indonesian military with mostly Western arms and equipment.
Writing of Suharto’s “unsung legacy” upon the late dictator’s death in 2008, former Labor prime minister Paul Keating observed that had Suharto’s New Order not “displaced” Sukarno and the Indonesian communist party, “communist-dominated Indonesia would have destabilised Australia and all of Southeast Asia”.
“Indonesia has been at the fulcrum of our strategic stability,” Keating declared. Political leaders today are similarly pragmatic.
Successive Australian governments have shown comfort dealing with strongman leaders, so long as they are not strategic rivals. Think, for example, of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declaring Narendra Modi “the boss”, despite the Indian prime minister’s overt hostility to religious minorities, political opponents and the press. Or Australia’s warm relations with the deeply repressive government of Vietnam.
Usman Kansong, Head of Indonesia's Task Force for Public Communication on Papua's Welfare, lauded MSG Director General Leonard Louma and Executive Advisor Christopher Nisbert for having a first hand review of the efforts made by the Indonesian government to develop the region.
"Their visit constitutes a positive step and deserves an appreciation, as two MSG leaders directly witnessed the real condition in the Land of Bird of Paradise," he noted in a statement received in Jakarta on Wednesday.
Director General Louma and Executive Adviser Nisbert during a visit to Jayapura City, Papua Province, on Monday (June 17) commended the real condition in the region.
The two figures shared the same view that Indonesia, an associate member of the MSG, had been demonstrating good practices in the management of its border areas.
They said it would be better for MSG member states to emulate the steps taken by Indonesia to properly manage borders in an effort to thwart illegal activities, such those recurring in the borders between Vanuatu and Solomon Islands.
Moreover, the two Melanesian figures noted that they view Indonesia's major role in the ASEAN as determinant and crucial to the interests of MSG member states.
Director General Louma remarked that he would endorse plantation cooperation among MSG states by involving Indonesia in various projects, including a vanilla plantation program in Vanuatu and Solomon Islands.
Related news: Indonesia's TNI reclaims Central Papua's sub-district from insurgents
Standing among the world's largest vanilla producers alongside Papua New Guinea, Indonesia can help MSG states penetrate ASEAN's vanilla market, he said, adding that the MSG genuinely seeks to boost Indonesia's involvement in the Melanesian sub-region.
Louma also made the most of his visit to Papua to explore educational cooperation potential between the MSG and Indonesia. In this regard, the two parties aimed for exchanges of pupils, college students, and lecturers.
Meanwhile, an Expert Staff at the Presidential Staff Office (KSP) Theo Litaay opined that the visit of MSG's representatives to Indonesia would bring positive impacts on the sub-region's economic, socio-cultural, and political aspects.
"Cooperation in this sub-region can stimulate economic growth in the Pacific as a whole. Countries in this sub-region will be able to take advantage of Southeast Asia's economic growth and use it as a catalyst for their development," he remarked.
Earlier, the MSG delegation arrived in an area bordering Papua Province's Skouw and Papua New Guinea's Wutung at 10 a.m. local time after taking a road trip from Port Moresby.
The entourage was then personally greeted by Indonesian Consul Alexander Tangkuman in the Skouw Cross-border Post.
Officials from Papua Province's Border and Cooperation Agency then picked up Louma and Nisbert to continue their trip to Jayapura City to have a first hand impression on Papua's development.
Related news: Govt says committed to protecting forests in Papua
Related news: Papuan people's councils voice support for Nusantara's development
Translator: Livia K, Tegar Nurfitra
Editor: Yuni Arisandy Sinaga
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WHAT IS THE CURRENT RATE OF DEFORESTATION IN INDONESIA?
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