The party started almost a year ago. On Instagram, a 71-year-old former military general posed wearing a white hoodie and a mild smile. To his followers, it made him look “ganteng”, “gemes” and “gemoy”. Handsome, cute. At election rallies and interviews over the next months, the General perfected his signature dance moves — an awkward flapping of the arms, a disciplined sway of the shoulders. The commander was decades ago linked to military brutality and abductions; but today, he has cultivated a figure that has charmed his supporters, who have branded themselves the Gemoy Squad. At the final rally, he shot hearts at the audience before singing an offkey rendition of Indonesia’s old independence song. People cried, ambulances were called.

Welcome to Prabowo Subianto’s dance party. An invitation to young Indonesians to celebrate the 2024 election, the largest one-day electoral exercise in the world, with joy. Mr. Subianto has much to be joyful about. On February 14, Mr. Subianto declared victory in a historic three-way presidential race, with unofficial counts showing a significant lead over his opponents. The soldier, who turned statesman two decades ago, had contested unsuccessfully twice before, changed his tack from being a populist to a loyalist, and transformed his image from strongman to cute, cuddly grandfather.

Cultural heritage connect us, thank Indonesian people for preserving it: Modi at Prambanan Temple complex

His time has come. It may take up to a month for official counts, but analysts say Mr. Subianto is likely to succeed the wildly popular Joko Widodo (known as ‘Jokowi’) to be the archipelago’s next President, with Mr. Widodo’s son Gibran Rakabuming Raka as the Vice President. This is the first change in leadership in a decade, and to his young supporters, Mr. Subianto promises political continuity and economic prosperity. To his critics, who remember darker days, Mr. Subianto stands as a relic of Indonesia’s autocratic past; even a bellwether of its threatened democratic future.

A political elite

Mr. Subianto was born into an aristocratic family in Jakarta in 1951. His lineage goes back to the sultans of Mataram,— Javanese rulers who came before the Dutch East India Company in the 18th century. His father, the famed economist Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, became a vocal critic of the nation’s founding president Sukarno and went into exile, shifting the family from Singapore to London, Kuala Lumpur to Zurich. The young Mr. Subianto spoke in an interview about early experiences of racism and “a strong sense of superiority among white people” in a new post-colonial world. “They often insulted me at school. I was always part of the minority…Because we were often bullied, often insulted, we became tough,” he told The Politic.

The family returned to Indonesia only in the late 1960s, at the beginning of autocrat Suharto’s 30-year-long reign. Mr. Subianto would eventually marry Siti Hediati Harijadi, Suharto’s second daughter.

One of Mr. Subianti’s role models is Turkish military figure Atatürk. His house is lined with books, oil paintings of horses, and vintage photographs of Sukarno, according to a Sydney Morning Herald article. In other interviews, Mr. Subianto has expressed his love for animals and has reportedly instructed his staff to not harm any creature in his mountain retreat home in West Java. “When we grow up and see human nature, there’s betrayal, perfidy, lying.” It’s easier with animals, he said in an interview. “You are loyal to them. They are loyal to you.”

When asked in an interview why he dances, he said he draws inspiration from his grandfather. “Every time there is good news or happy news, he would always dance like that.”

A controversial past

A young Mr. Subianto received military training in the 1980s from the U.S. military station then called Fort Benning, and rose through the ranks to become a commander of the special armed forces Kopassus. There, Mr. Subianto was accused of fomenting anti-Chinese riots and directing the killing of separatists in East Timor, which Indonesia was occupying at the time. He denied responsibility and later remarked: “They had to have a fall guy, somebody to take responsibility.” This sentiment prevailed after a 1996 mission in Papua too, when he allegedly used a Red Cross insignia on his helicopter to free European hostages, a sign that may have drawn villagers out into the open. Two hostages were freed, hundreds of locals killed. “I should be given a knighthood by your government… I put my own life at risk and my soldiers were killed,” Mr. Subianto told a Financial Times reporter in 2013.

In 1998, when Suharto’s regime fell at the peak of the Asian financial crisis, Mr. Subianto was also dishonourably discharged from the military for his role in human rights abuses, including the disappearance of 23 democracy activists (13 of whom were never found). He was briefly banned from travel to the U.S. The allegations have not been proven in court, and Mr. Subianto has never accepted or denied the allegations. “I’m a proud alumnus of the Indonesian military,” he said in a 2017 interview.

The military career came to an end. Mr. Subianto’s went into self-imposed exile to Jordan in 2002, supported by his brother Hashim who had built his wealth upon oil, palm and mineral exchange dealings. In a 2017 interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, Mr. Subianto remarked that he could have enjoyed a simpler life of mountain retreats surrounded by horses and purple bougainville, but he feared Indonesia was becoming a “banana republic”. With Hashim’s financial backing, the former military general started Gerindra, the Great Indonesian Movement Party. Who were his role models in this political journey? Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, Thailand’s Thaksin Shinawatra (who faced similar charges of human rights violations). Thaksin was a “bit abrasive, divisive”, but “got things done and the poor love him”, he told FT. Also on this list: Jawaharlal Nehru who “came from came from a wealthy family but always defended the poor”.

A CIA internal intelligence assessment, back in 1983, like a prophecy predicted the captain exemplified “the type of officer who could rise to national leadership”. The now-declassified documents added: “We believe that President Suharto may eventually look to his son-in-law to succeed him both as national leader and as guardian of the Suharto family fortunes.” 

A ‘TikTok General’

Prophecies don’t come with a timeline. Mr. Subianto’s presidential aspirations have been 22 years in the making. He failed to secure a nomination from Suharto’s party in 2004. He ran a populist campaign in 2014, arguing that the system is diseased.. He alleged electoral fraud upon losing to the incumbent Mr. Widodo, which sparked deadly riots in Jakarta. He lost again in 2019, and was later given the defence portfolio under Mr. Widodo’s cabinet.

2024 was different on two accounts. One, there was a political transformation. He went from being a hardline nationalist and Islamist to a loyalist, integrating himself with Indonesia’s political elite. Mr. Widodo, who has served two full terms in office, enjoys an approval rating of more than 80%, with Indonesians largely favourable to the development and social welfare measures he has put in place. “Anyone who has caught Widodo’s blessing has the keys to the presidential palace,” said human rights advocate Andreas Harsono in an interview. He swapped corruption charges against his rivals in favour of praising them and making “political courtesy visits” to his rivals. Mr. Widodo has not given his explicit approval to any candidate, but his son Gibran’s pick as Mr. Subianto’s running mate is seen as tacit approval. Mr. Subianto also aspires to be the first President in Indonesia’s history under whom every single party will be in the cabinet, a pledge to continue the legacy of coalition governments in the last two decades. Scholar Marcus Meitzner in an interview argued that the General is framing himself as a “president for everyone” and covering all ideological elements of Indonesian society. If one opponent Anies Baswedan is too religious, and the other Ganjar Pranowo a leftist national, then Mr. Subianto presents “a blend of all of the ideological currents.”

His outfits hint at this fluidity too: he went from wearing Safari suits to double-breasted blazers, and now casual untucked hanging shirts.

Two, Mr. Subianto’s popularity this time around leveraged Indonesia’s young electorate, who comprise more than half of Indonesia’s 204 million eligible voters spread across some 17,000 islands. This is also a demographic that has no living memory of Mr. Subianto’s autocratic past. Analysts note his campaign has been designed for the TikTok generation, packaging him as a ‘cuddly dancing grandpa’, his new avatar presented on posters plastered across Indonesia. Mr. Subianto’s Instagram is well-curated, with pictures of food, vintage family portraits, dance moves, and his cat Bobby shared with his 11 million followes (Bobby has an individual Instagram account too). “Prabowo’s team is portraying Prabowo in a ‘softer’ way in an effort to win over undecided voters…” Ross Tapsell of the Australian National University told Reuters. The avatar is everywhere, and successful so far: one poll showed 60% of Gen-Z voters and 42% of millennials support Mr. Subianto.

Commenting on this makeover, his campaign manager Rosan Roeslani said in a report: “People know already Mr. Prabowo is very assertive, but we need to show the other side of Mr. Prabowo.” Spectators have described the General’s pre-2019 persona as aggressive and mercurial, prone to “uncontrollable temper”. “I do have a temper but is it terrible or not?” Mr. Subianto quipped in an interview. Now, he is mellow an innocuous defender of the poor. “We should not be arrogant, we should not be proud, we should not be euphoric, we still have to be humble, this victory must be a victory for all Indonesian people,” Mr. Subianto said in his victory speech on February 15. He wore a matching checked shirt, the same as his running mate.

Some worry there is a danger to Mr. Subianto’s revisionism of history. Because of TikTok virality, young voters may remain unaware that Mr. Subianto was linked to human rights abuses during his military career, said Endah Triastuti, a communications researcher at the University of Indonesia. Others, however, including Chatham Houses’s Ben Bland argued that the former general’s dictatorial past is unlikely to be a threat to Indonesian democracy: people’s enthusiasm “reflects their conviction that he will uphold Jokowi’s positive economic legacy” and a “faith that their democratic institutions can rein in even a strong-willed president”.

here is also a desire to judge the General based on present issues of employment and inflation rather than the sins of the past. “I think the past stays in the past…everybody at some point has an intention to reform [themselves]. And now he is different,” a 17-year-old told the Sydney Morning Herald at an election rally. O

Mr. Subianto, while referring to his time as a soldier in a recent interview, said: “Maybe the perception of me was that I was tough, scary. I am not scary now, right?”  

A Prabowo presidency

Once confirmed, Mr. Subianto will be the third ruler directly elected to office since Indonesia became a democracy. His pro-youth messaging is programmed in his election promises too. Like other candidates, Mr. Subianto has pledged to expand economic initiatives, increase social security cover, create new jobs, and build the new capital city, but analysts note these promises “lack serious reform commitment”. However, observers doubt if his mercurial persona is fully stripped away. Mr. Meitzner argued that the new President will not always keep Mr. Widodo in his orbit, and it is only “inevitable” that Mr. Subianto untethers himself from the incumbent once he develops his sources of political power. “No one knows how Prabowo will govern…most who know him well emphasise his unpredictable personality. And that’s never good for governance,” said scholar Eve Warburton to BBC.

Mr. Subianto will also take charge of Southeast Asia’s fastest-growing economy, and will have to grapple with the U.S.-China rivalry. “Don’t let us continuously be pitted against each other by foreign nations. Don’t let us continuously be lied to…,” he said last week.

During an election rally, Mr. Subianto called for a status quo “rebalancing” where Indonesia stops looking to the West and instead learns from countries like China and India.

Indonesia’s ‘crossroads’ democracy

Indonesia is a country of cliches, one being that it is at a perennial crossroads. In a Simpsons episode, Homer Simpson is seen reading The Economist, with the cover headline reading, “Indonesia at a Crossroads”. An anxiety about if the country is moving away from its autocratic past and towards a freer future. As Mr. Subianto maintained a lead in polls, Andreas Harsono quipped: “The new cliche is that Indonesian is not at a crossroads anymore.” At his last rally, to a hysterical audience, Mr. Subianto sang the independence song Maju Tak Gentar: “Fear not, fear not / Attack, Attack/Go forward, go forward and win.”

Activists fear Mr. Subianto’s presidency may trigger a democratic backslide. Concerns have sprung up, in the way Mr. Widodo’s government pushed a controversial law to lower the constitutional age for contesting elections, allowing his son to be Mr. Subianto’s running mate. Surveys show that 70% of Indonesians think it has become harder to express their beliefs, but they also think that they live in a robust democracy. This is “the beauty of elite manipulation of democracy in Indonesia,” remarked Mr. Meirzner. Mr. Subianto’s victory is as much about his gemoy popularity, as it is about maintaining Mr. Widodo’s political influence. With this campaign Indonesia moves towards a dynastic political regime: Mr. Widodo is the first President in Indonesia’s history to have played a Kingmaker, engineering a successor who promises political control.

A

In matters of succession, Mr. Subianto is the certain heir to Mr. Widodo’s legacy, but an uncertain one to Indonesia’s democracy. It is unclear which persona will rule: the nationalist General, the blazing Islamist Prabowo, or the gemoy grandfather. For now, Prabowo Subianto’s song and dance has captured Indonesia’s democratic pulse. Prabowo Subianto is Indonesia’s president, at last.

Jakarta:

A cyberattack on Indonesia’s national data centre compromised hundreds of government offices and caused long delays at the capital’s main airport, with the hacker demanding an $8 million ransom, officials said Monday.

Long queues formed at immigration gates at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport last week after systems went down in the attack, carried out using software developed by Russian ransomware outfit LockBit, an official from the communications ministry said.

The attack “affected 210 institutions at the national and local levels,” senior official Semuel Abrijani Pangerapan told reporters on Monday, adding a dark web hacker had demanded a $8 million ransom.

He added that immigration services were returning to normal on Monday morning and work was being done to restore other affected services.

Authorities are still investigating the ransomware, known as Brain Cipher, which made government data inaccessible due to encryption, he said.

LockBit and its affiliates have targeted governments, major companies, schools and hospitals, causing billions of dollars of damage and extracting tens of millions in ransoms from victims.

Typically, their programmes — once inserted by the ransomware operator into a target’s IT systems — are manipulated to freeze, via encryption, the target’s files and data.

The United States, Britain and Australia last month unveiled sanctions against the leader of LockBit, which they accuse of extorting billions of dollars from thousands of victims.

The group was responsible for a quarter of all ransomware attacks worldwide last year, and has extorted “over $1 billion from thousands of victims globally,” according to the UK government.

The top five countries hit by LockBit were the United States, Britain, France, Germany and China, according to Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency.

Indonesia has a weak cyber security record, with poor online literacy and frequent leaks.

In 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers for encryption provider vpnMentor revealed the data of 1.3 million users of a government test-and-trace app had been compromised.

The reveal came just months after the data of more than 200 million participants of the National Health Care and Social Security Agency (BPJS Kesehatan) was allegedly leaked by hackers.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Rescuers put the body of a victim of a flash flood on a gurney at a local community health center in Padang Pariaman, West Sumatra, Indonesia, on May 12, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Heavy rain brought floods and landslides to Indonesia’s province of West Sumatra, killing at least 28, with four still missing, authorities said on May 12.

“There are 28 people killed, and we are still searching for four others who are missing,” Abdul Malik, the chief of the provincial rescue team, told Reuters.

The national disaster management agency BNPB said in a statement that flooding since Saturday night had brought mud to the Tanah Datar regency, affecting five sub-districts.

BNPB said its latest assessment showed 84 housing units and 16 bridges were affected by the disaster, adding that heavy equipment had been deployed to speed up the clearing of road access.

Mount Ruang volcano erupts in Sitaro, North Sulawesi, on April 19, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

A remote volcano in Indonesia’s outermost region erupted again on April 19, local authorities and an AFP journalist said, after the crater threw up columns of smoke and lava multiple times this week and forced thousands to evacuate.

“The volcano erupts again,” said the AFP journalist on the island of Tagulandang which neighbours Mount Ruang.

The country’s volcanology agency later confirmed the eruption sent a plume of smoke 400 metres (1,312 feet) above the peak.

“There was an eruption of Mt Ruang, North Sulawesi” at 1706 local time, 0906 GMT, it said.

“The ash column was observed to be grey in colour… and leaning towards the south.”

While officials said Ruang had started to calm Friday, authorities maintained the highest alert level on a four-tiered system, which indicates high volcanic activity.

They also told residents to remain more than six kilometres (four miles) from the crater.

Indonesia, a vast archipelago nation, experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”.

A landslide and floods swept away dozens of houses and destroyed a hotel near Lake Toba on Sumatra in December, killing at least two people. Image for representation purposes only. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The death toll from flash flooding and landslides on the Indonesian island of Sumatra has risen to 21, an official said March 10, with six people still missing.

Torrential rains on Thursday triggered the disaster in Pesisir Selatan regency in the West Sumatra province, with more than 75,000 people forced to evacuate.

“As of Sunday, 21 people were found dead and six people remained missing,” Fajar Sukma, an official from West Sumatra disaster mitigation agency, told AFP by phone on Sunday.

A village located on a hillside in the Sutera subdistrict was struck hard, with around 200 families in the area left isolated after a landslide followed by flash flooding, Mr. Fajar said.

A local official earlier put the death toll at 18 with five missing.

Rescuers were searching for the missing on Sunday as authorities focused their operation on three areas affected by the disasters, local search and rescue official Abdul Malik said.

“Today’s search involves around 150 people from disaster organisations in West Sumatra,” Mr. Abdul said in a statement.

Doni Gusrizal, a senior official from the Pesisir Selatan disaster mitigation agency, said waters had started to recede after the flooding, but added that access to areas affected by the landslide remained difficult because of hilly terrain.

In the Padang Pariaman regency, also in West Sumatra, heavy downpours earlier this week caused rivers to overflow and triggered floods and a landslide, killing at least three people, according to a statement from the local disaster agency.

Indonesia is prone to landslides during the rainy season and the problem has been aggravated in some places by deforestation, with prolonged torrential rain causing flooding in some areas of the archipelago nation.

A landslide and floods swept away dozens of houses and destroyed a hotel near Lake Toba on Sumatra in December, killing at least two people.

A shallow 6.0-magnitude earthquake hit near the Indonesian island of Sulawesi on Saturday, the United States Geological Survey said, with no damage or casualties immediately reported.

The tremor hit at 9:43 p.m. local time (1443 GMT) at a depth of 9.9 kilometres, according to the USGS.

Indonesia’s geophysics agency (BMKG) reported no immediate tsunami but warned of possible aftershocks. It initially reported a magnitude of 6.3.

“I was having a good sleep (when the earthquake jolted). I jumped out of bed immediately,” said Qamariah, a 41-year-old housewife in Central Sulawesi’s Malei village.

“It felt like being shaken as if rice was being sifted. It went up and then down. It was really strong because I lived close to the epicentre. It lasted for about 5 seconds,” she told AFP.

She said the power was out in her area so she could not see if there was damage.

“I am outside (my house) right now, with family and my neighbours,” she added.

Video obtained by AFP showed panicking people in Central Sulawesi’s Lambonga village gathered in groups outside of their homes as they sought safety in fear of aftershocks.

“As of now, there have been no reports of damage and casualties caused by the earthquake,” the Palu Search and Rescue Agency said in a statement.

“The residents of Balesang coastal village in Pabean, Donggala regency, have evacuated to higher ground, with the majority leaving their homes,” it added, referring to an area in Central Sulawesi.

Indonesia, a vast archipelago nation, experiences frequent earthquakes due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity where tectonic plates collide that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

A 6.2-magnitude quake that shook Sulawesi island in January 2021 killed more than 100 people and left thousands homeless.

In 2018, a 7.5-magnitude quake and subsequent tsunami in Palu on Sulawesi killed more than 2,200 people.

And in 2004, a 9.1-magnitude quake struck Aceh province, causing a tsunami and killing more than 170,000 people in Indonesia.

In November last year, a 5.6-magnitude quake hit the Southeast Asian nation’s Java island, killing 602 people.

Most of the victims of that earthquake were killed when buildings collapsed or in landslides triggered by the tremor.

A 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck off the country’s Sumatra island in April, shaking homes of panicked residents but causing no casualties or damage.