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The political drama of the 5th General Election of Indonesia mirrors strongly with the quote “The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness. ...This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.” from “The Plato’s Republic.”  The presidential race of Indonesia came to an end with Probowo Subian to, the son-in-law of the former dictator Suharto, being elected as the next president of the country. Although the country has a reputation for being the 11th most electoral democratic country in Asia, it assumed the democratic process very recently after the fall of Suharto’s military regime, the longest-serving president of Indonesia. After Suharto’s fall in 1998, Indonesia kept seeing dynastical politics until the previous president Joko Widodo claimed the presidency in 2014 from The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI) with a clean slate in terms of having any political background and won the heart of the citizen with bolstering infrastructure development in the country.  This helped him to secure his second-term victory in Indonesia’s general elections of 2019. Jokowi’s popularity grew over the years and his approval rate went up 82%, the highest of all time. However, Jokowi couldn’t continue his tenure and ran for another term due to constitutional cause. 

The race for the presidential power mainly took place among three players, Minister of Defense; Prabowo Subian to from Gerindra Party, Govornor of DKI Jakarta; Anies Baswedan as independent candidate and Governor of Central Java; Ganjar Pranowo from PDI in the 2024’s election. In the previous elections in 2014 and 2019, the current president Probowo Subian to ran against Jokowi and lost the battle twice. After the 2019 election, Subian to was alleged for instigating riots against Jokowi in the hope of a popular uprising that would overthrow Jokowi. After this incident, Jokowi made a shrewd judgment and appointed Subian to as his defense minister, to keep him at bay. Apart from instigating riots against the president, Subian to has numerous allegations against him for violating human rights which goes back to the time of dictator Suharto’s ragtime. When protests threatened to bring down Suharto in 1998, Prabowo ordered a special forces team to kidnap various pro-democracy activists. 

Subianto being the rival of Jokowi and his stained past didn’t matter in terms of getting the approval of the popular and demanding outgoing president. Jokowi endorsed his Minister of Defense Subianto by letting his eldest son Gibran RakabumingRaka, 36 years old, as Subianto’s Vice President. However, the age restriction for running for vice president was 40 until Jokowi put his son on the power table as his successor. A ruling from Indonesia’s Constitutional Court came in October, 3 months before the election that younger candidates could run if they had previously been elected to public office. When the decision was taken,  the head of the court at the time was Anwar Usman, Jokowi’s brother-in-law which made it crystal clear who was the puppeteer of the election.

In the book of Plato’s Republic, Plato said that democracy always turns into despotism. At first, people get tired of the oligarchs and start a revolution by choosing a leader amongst themselves, who can represent them. But with time, the Democrats became power-hungry and created a puppet government that served their interest, forgetting about the people who handed them power in the first place. The famous philosopher’s words might be old but their relevance of it is timeless. Joko Widodo came from the people, worked for the people, and became the leader of millions from just being and obscurity. He was compared as a new breeze for Indonesian democracy. However, the hunger to leave a legacy behind got the best of him. Subianto, a former military general linked to past human rights violations during the brutal period of the Suharto dictatorship, was once banned from entering the United States for two decades because of his record won the election with the support of the people’s beloved leader Jokowi and his successor Gibran RakabumingRaka proving Plato’s words. All the work that Jokowi has done for the people in Indonesia is now in the hands of an authoritarian leader. Indonesia has seen dictatorship twice in the past and with the newly elected president, they might go through the process all again, thanks to the beloved leader Jokowi. 

Marzana Mahnaz is a Research Assistant at CGS

The views expressed in this write-up are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policies of CGS.