Disaster management agency says more than 80,000 people have fled to temporary government shelters.
Flash floods and a landslide on Indonesia’s Sumatra island have left at least 19 people dead and seven others missing, officials have said.
Mud, rocks and uprooted trees rushed down a mountainside and engulfed villages in the Pesisir Selatan district of West Sumatra province late on Friday following torrential rains, Doni Yusrizal, who heads the local disaster management agency, said on Sunday.
Yusrizal said rescuers recovered seven bodies in the village of Koto XI Tarusan and three others in two neighbouring villages.
“Relief efforts for the dead and missing were hampered by power outages, blocked roads covered in thick mud and debris,” Yusrizal said.
Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency said six bodies were found in Pesisir Selatan and three bodies were found in the neighbouring district of Padang Pariaman, bringing the death toll so far to 19.
The agency said at least two villagers were injured and seven others were still missing, with more than 80,000 people fleeing to temporary government shelters.
Flash floods and landslides are a common occurrence in Indonesia, where millions of people live near floodplains, especially during the rainy season.
In December, at least two people were killed when a landslide and floods swept away dozens of houses and destroyed a hotel near Lake Toba on Sumatra.
Her three-year-old daughter at her side, single mother Ekawati plies Jakarta’s notorious traffic in her three-wheeled autorickshaw, making ends meet as one of a growing number of Indonesian women seeking informal employment outside the home.
Not that Ekawati has much choice. After her first husband died and she divorced her second, it’s on her to pay rent and support her four children, pulling in about 150,000 rupiah ($10) a day picking up fares outside the bustling textile hub of Tanah Abang Market.
“Driving a three-wheeled taxi is the fastest way to get money. I have tried various jobs but this is the most convenient one,” said the 42-year-old, who has been driving her rented vehicle for about 15 years.
Her eldest son, now 20, dropped out of school and works as a courier to help out, but Ekawati says she still lives hand to mouth, as covering her 800,000-rupiah ($51.3) rent and feeding her family takes up all of her earnings.
According to data from Statistics Indonesia (BPS), 12.72 percent of Indonesian households in 2022 had female breadwinners, mostly in urban areas. The number of female homemakers, meanwhile, began to decline during the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the same time, many Indonesian women have moved into informal employment in the service and agriculture sectors to support their families following a major reduction in official job prospects during the COVID years, according to the World Bank.
Ekawati’s second child passed away due to an illness, but she managed to send her son to an elementary school with assistance from the local government.
Now she is attempting to get similar aid for her other son who is in junior high.
“I have to drive this three-wheeler so I can give my children proper food, clothes and a house,” Ekawati said, with tears in her eyes.
“I hope God gives me good health. I also hope my children will be successful, unlike myself.”
Working in a male-dominated environment, Ekawati said she had to be tough to make it on the streets, where sexual harassment and extortion by thugs are prevalent.
“Once a passenger asked me to sleep with him for 500,000 rupiah. I immediately asked him to get out of the vehicle,” she said.
“As a woman, I don’t want to be weak. I must be strong because I make a living on and from the street. No one will help me, except myself.”
Medan, Indonesia – Herlina Panjaitan has not changed her mobile phone number since her son, 25-year-old Firman Chandra Siregar, went missing 10 years ago.
Siregar, an Indonesian, was a passenger on MH370, the Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared 40 minutes into its flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in the early hours of March 8, 2014 and was never heard from again.
It is important to 69-year-old Panjaitan that her number remains the same, just in case her youngest son tries to call her.
“That was the number I used at the time and that is the number Firman has for me. I still hope he will call and ask me to go and pick him up, wherever he is,” she told Al Jazeera.
Panjaitan had travelled to Kuala Lumpur from her home in Medan, Indonesia with her daughter-in-law and grandson the night before Siregar departed for Beijing, so the family could spend some time together before he started his new job with an oil company in China.
Before he left for the airport to catch the late-night flight, Panjaitan helped her son pack his belongings, including a bag filled with warm clothing for Beijing’s freezing winter.
The family took photographs together, with Siregar beaming as he played with his nephew.
Panjaitan proudly displays photos of Siregan in her home, including of his graduation from the prestigious Bandung Institute of Technology [Aisyah Llewellyn/Al Jazeera]
The pictures now hang on the wall of the family’s home in Medan, which lies on the other side of the Strait of Malacca facing Malaysia.
“I told him to be careful and call me when he got to Beijing,” Panjaitan said. “There was no feeling that anything was about to go wrong.”
The next morning, Panjaitan got a call from her daughter who worked at the Indonesian embassy in Mexico to ask her if she had heard the news about MH370.
“She just said that she had heard that it had lost contact with air traffic control,” she recalled. “I didn’t know what to think.”
Panjaitan and her family immediately rushed to Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) where the families of the 239 passengers and crew on board were briefed on the plane’s mysterious disappearance.
“That is when I started to believe that it had really gone missing,” she said.
Ten years since it took off from KLIA, the plane’s fate has become one of aviation’s greatest mysteries.
No one has been able to say with any certainty what happened to the Boeing 777 after Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah signed off from Malaysian air traffic control with the words “Good night, Malaysian three seven zero”, and prepared to enter Vietnamese airspace.
According to satellite data, rather than continuing on to Beijing, the plane dramatically veered off course, flying back across northern Malaysia and skirting around Indonesia, before heading south towards the deep waters of the Indian Ocean.
Panjaitan said that she called Siregar’s mobile phone after she heard the news and that it had rung several times but that no one had answered.
A woman in Kuala Lumpur writes a message to mark the 10th anniversary of MH370’s disappearance [FL Wong/AP Photo]
Two weeks later, then Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced the plane had “ended” its journey in the remote southern Indian Ocean.
‘The best child’
Siregar, a graduate of Indonesia’s prestigious Bandung Institute of Technology, was the youngest of five children – three boys and two girls – and Panjaitan says he was “the best”.
“That doesn’t mean my other children aren’t amazing,” she explained. “One works as a prosecutor and another is a diplomat, but Firman was just the best child and my other children understand what I mean when I say that. He was so handsome, so well-behaved, so respectful and so kind.
“He never gave me any trouble as a child, and he knew what to do and what not to do without me telling him.”
Before he went to Beijing, Siregar had introduced his mother and family to his girlfriend and her parents, who had travelled from Bandung to meet Panjaitan and her husband Chrisman.
“They said they wanted to get married and I was happy that he’d found his life partner,” she said.
Six months after the plane went missing, Panjaitan and her husband went to Bandung to meet Siregar’s girlfriend and gave her their blessing to move forward with her life.
“We said that if she wanted to get married in the future, she should do it,” Panjaitan told Al Jazeera. “She didn’t say anything, just cried. And we cried too, it was just so sad.”
Many theories, few answers
Endless speculation has filled the void left by the failure to find MH370.
Some claim Captain Zaharie engineered a sophisticated murder-suicide plot to deliberately crash the plane into the ocean.
Others suggest that the plane was hijacked, deliberately shot down, or suffered a technical malfunction that cut off its communication systems and incapacitated the pilots leading to its eventual crash.
None of the claims has been proven.
Searches have proved fruitless, including a significant underwater and air search across an area of 120,000sq km (46,332sq miles) that cost $147m and was led by an Australian team in conjunction with Malaysia and China.
The Malaysian authorities have also launched several investigations that culminated in a 495-page report that was finally released in 2018. It found that while foul play was likely, it was not possible to say who was responsible.
Last week, ahead of the 10th anniversary, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim reiterated that Malaysia was prepared to reopen an investigation if new evidence emerged.
Malaysia’s transport minister, Anthony Loke, has also said that he has plans to meet US marine robotics company, Ocean Infinity, to discuss a new proposed underwater search.
Panjaitan said that her family welcomes any renewed investigation.
Some fragments from the plane have washed up on East African beaches, including a flaperon that forms part of the wing, but there has been nothing more substantial.
For Panjaitan that leaves room for hope.
“If it crashed, why haven’t they found it? It is a huge plane. What is important is that, alive or not, we still have hope that they will be found,” she said.
“Hopefully Firman is alive, and we can go and pick him up wherever he is. When I see him again, the first thing I will do is give him a big hug.”
Funds come after Philippine president told Australian parliament he would ‘not yield’ a ‘square inch’ in the South China Sea.
Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong has announced 64 million Australian dollars ($41.8m) in funding for maritime security on the first day of a special summit with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Melbourne.
“The countries of our region rely on oceans, seas and rivers for livelihoods and commerce, including free and open sea lanes in the South China Sea,” Wong said in her address to a forum on maritime cooperation on Monday morning.
Wong did not specify which countries the funding would go to but “welcomed efforts” by Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines to “delimit their maritime boundaries”.
“What happens in the South China Sea, in the Taiwan Strait, in the Mekong subregion, across the Indo-Pacific, affects us all,” Wong said.
The special summit hosted in Melbourne marks 50 years since Australia became a “dialogue partner” of ASEAN, whose members are countries in Southeast Asia, and comes as its members last year held their first-ever joint military drills.
The ruling centre-left Labor party has long aimed to forge closer ties with the region, recognising Australia’s proximity to Southeast Asia.
But Australia’s relationship with its regional neighbours and its interests in the South China Sea is also viewed through the lens of Australia’s close ties with the United States and its membership in the Australia, United Kingdom and United States security pact known as AUKUS.
In her speech, Wong quoted Indonesian President Joko Widodo as saying, “We also have the responsibility to lower the tension, to melt the ice, to create space for dialogue, to bridge the differences” in the region.
Indonesia, along with Malaysia, is among Australia’s allies in the region to have raised concerns that Canberra’s investing tens of billions of dollars in nuclear submarines is potentially contributing to a nuclear arms race in Southeast Asia and the wider Asia Pacific.
Philippines ‘will not yield one square inch’
In a speech to Australia’s parliament last week, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr was resolute on his countries’ position on the South China Sea, amid rising tension with Beijing over their competing claims.
“I will not allow any attempt by any foreign power to take even one square inch of our sovereign territory,” Marcos said.
The Philippines has reported multiple incidents with China in the South China Sea, accusing its coast guard of dangerous manoeuvres and filing diplomatic protests with Beijing over its actions.
“The challenges that we face may be formidable, but equally formidable is our resolve. We will not yield,” he said.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr addresses the House of Representatives at Parliament House in Canberra on Thursday [David Gray/AFP]
But while some Australian representatives reportedly applauded Marcos’s remarks, at least one member of Australia’s parliament, Senator Janet Rice, publicly questioned his legacy and was kicked out for holding up a sign saying, “Stop the Human Rights Abuses”.
Marcos Jr is the son of former Philippine hardline leader Ferdinand Marcos who was overthrown in a popular uprising in 1986 and fled into exile.
Greens Senator Janet Rice holds a sign as Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr delivers an address to members and senators at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia on Thursday [Mick Tsikas/AAP Image via AP]
On the streets outside parliament last week, activists held protests on Australia’s apparent lack of scrutiny of its allies’ human rights records, amid ongoing protests over Australia’s support for Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip. More protests are planned around this week’s ASEAN summit.
Wong’s speech also included a nod to Australian funding for climate change resilience through the Mekong-Australia partnership, as many Australians, and neighbouring Pacific countries, question increasing militarisation in a time of climate crisis.
Qatar tells the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that it rejects the “double standards” when international law applies to some but not to others during a hearing on Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.
“Some children are deemed worthy of protection while others are killed in their thousands,” senior Qatari diplomat Mutlaq al-Qahtani said on Friday in The Hague.
“Qatar rejects such double standards. International law must be upheld in all circumstances. It must be applied to all, and there must be accountability”.
Al-Qahtani added that Israel had implemented an “apartheid regime” to maintain the “domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians”.
He also said the occupation is “illegal” due to it violating the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.
The court has the “clear mandate and indeed the responsibility to remedy this unacceptable situation. The credibility of the international legal order depends on your opinion, and the stakes cannot be higher.”
Qatar, the United States and Egypt are currently mediating negotiations for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas to stop the current war, which is taking a devastating toll on Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip.
Over the past week, the ICJ has been hearing the opinion of more than 50 countries on the legal implications of Israel’s occupation ahead of the court issuing a nonbinding opinion.
The 15-judge panel has been asked to review Israel’s “occupation, settlement and annexation, … including measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and from its adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures”.
But Qatar echoed similar statements from several countries in calling out Israel’s policy as a breach of international law, including South Africa, which also referred to the occupation as “apartheid”.
Representatives from several other countries, including Pakistan, Norway, Indonesia and the United Kingdom, spoke at Friday’s hearing.
Pakistani Minister for Law and Justice Ahmed Irfan Aslam said that while Israel had tried to make its occupation of the Palestinian territories irreversible, history has shown that change is possible, referring to the withdrawal of French settlers from Algeria in 1962.
He added that a two-state solution “must be the basis for peace”.
Norway’s representative said developments on the ground “give reason to ask whether the occupation is turning into a de facto annexation”, which is prohibited under international law.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, who said she left the G20 meeting in Brazil to address the ICJ personally, stated: “I stand before you to defend justice against a blatant violation of international humanitarian law that is being committed by Israel.”
Marsudi added that Israel’s “unlawful occupation” should not be normalised or recognised, all actions that stop the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination “shall be unlawful” and it is clear that its “apartheid regime” is in breach of international law.
The British representative was the only person to divert from what other countries had said on Friday and instead aligned with the US, who called on the court to reject issuing an advisory opinion.
The representative said that while Israel’s occupation is illegal, it is a “bilateral dispute”, and issuing an opinion would affect the security framework led by the United Nations Security Council.
The hearings are, in part, a push by Palestinian officials to get international legal institutions to investigate Israel’s occupation, especially in light of the current war on Gaza.
During the past four months and after Hamas’s October 7 attacks in southern Israel, which killed 1,139 Israelis, Israel has conducted a military campaign in Gaza, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 29,000 Palestinians.
In the occupied West Bank, settler violence has increased, and world leaders have issued sanctions to try to penalise and curb the attacks.
Israel, which is not attending the hearing, has said the court proceedings could be harmful to achieving some kind of negotiated settlement.
Bali, Indonesia – At dawn, as the first shards of light dance over the rice fields in the seaside village of Seseh on Bali’s west coast, Putu and her husband Made, who like many Indonesians go by one name only, spend an hour reciting prayers and distributing small palm leaf baskets containing offerings to ensure the health of the coming harvest.
Later in the day, their 11-year-old daughter will attend a class for “sanghyang dedari”, a sacred trance dance for girls that is designed to counteract negative supernatural forces.
Meanwhile, her two older brothers will hone their skills on wooden xylophones and hand drums as part of a traditional “gamelan” orchestra in preparation for a ceremony celebrating the completion of a new Hindu temple, one of more than 10,000 on the island.
In the coming weeks, Made and his children will help their neighbours create giant “ogoh-ogoh” dolls, representations of evil mythological creatures fashioned from wood, bamboo, paper and styrofoam, that will be paraded through the streets and set alight the night before Nyepi, the Balinese Hindu new year.
Taking place this year on March 11, Nyepi, or the “day of silence”, will see every light on the island turned off, transport come to a halt and the airport close. Everyone, Balinese or not, will stay at home to give evil spirits the impression there is nothing to be found on the island.
“Every day I lay offerings, attend a ceremony or go to a temple,” Putu told Al Jazeera. “I do this because I am Hindu, because I believe. My children do the same and when they have children, they will do the same also.”
Balinese place small palm leaf baskets containing offerings around their homes, fields, temples and buildings every day [Ian Neubauer/Al Jazeera]
The Balinese anomaly
Putu’s hopes for the future are shared with the vast majority of Balinese, an island where a hybrid Hindu-Buddhist religion based on ancestor worship and animism dating back to the first century has survived and even thrived in the face of mass tourism.
By 1930, tourist numbers reached several hundred per year. Last year, 5.2 million foreigners along with 9.4 million domestic holidaymakers visited Bali, according to government data, and the island is developing at breakneck speed to cater to the demand.
The negative effects of such tremendous growth are illustrated in the murals of Balinese artist Slinat, who marries the iconic photographs of Balinese dancers with contemporary emblems like gas masks and dollar bills.
“These old photos were the first images used to promote tourism in Bali and convey that it is an exotic place. They kick-started tourism in Bali,” Slinat told Al Jazeera. “But then we had too much tourism and it ruined the exoticness of Bali. So I created this parody to express how much things have changed here since those photos were taken.”
Nevertheless, Balinese traditional culture and religion have remained resilient in the face of the tourist onslaught, which is something of an anomaly compared with other tourist hot spots around the world.
“When local people entertain tourists, they adapt [to] tourists’ needs, attitudes and values and ultimately start to follow them. By following tourists’ lifestyle, young people bring changes in the material goods,” was the finding of a study on the impact of tourism on culture that was published in 2016 in the Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Sports.
The study said the Pokhara-Ghandruk community in Nepal was a textbook example, where “the traditional fashion, behaviour and lifestyle of young Gurungs have been severely affected by tourism … [who] disobey their elders’ Kinship titles”. It said Indonesia was an exception – a country where “to attract distant tourists, children nurture local customs to create a strong and authentic base of cultural components without disrupting ancestors’ values”.
There are no flights in or out of Bali’s international airport on Nyepi day and tourists must stay in their hotels [File: Fikri Yusuf/Antara Foto via Reuters]
A lecturer in traditional architecture at Warmadewa University in Bali, I Nyoman Gede Maha Putra explains the roots of that approach.
“Colonial government policies dating back to the 1930s that promote how the Balinese should be Balinese, including school curriculums, production of traditional foods and beverages and unsparing investments in religious buildings have played a key role in preserving culture and religion on the so-called Island of the Gods,” he said, adding that construction codes formalised in the 1970s that required no new building to be no taller than a coconut tree had helped maintain “a sense of the place” on the island.
“Soon, all our young people will start making ogoh-ogoh paper statues for Nyepi. No one will be left out. They will enjoy the process, they will enjoy the parades, and feel proud when the tourists see what they’ve made. And our daily ceremonies will continue because we believe very strongly that our ancestors’ ghosts live around us and our ceremonies are the only way we can communicate with them,” Maha Putra said.
A facade
Others say it is the adaptability of Balinese culture that has made it resilient.
“Balinese culture is not static,” I Ketut Putra Erawan, a lecturer in political science at Bali’s Udayana University, told Al Jazeera. “Time and time again it has shown it has the power to reinvent itself through the problems and opportunities we face; things like tourism, social media, individualism, capitalism and mass culture. It finds new ways to make itself relevant to young people in new times.”
But these new shapes and expressions are not as solid as those of the past, he cautions.
“Today we are flooded with so much information and misinformation, and what that tends to do is promote the skin of the culture, the outside element of the culture, things like consumerism and fashion, but not the core of the culture,” Erawan said. “Many people prioritise the wrong things in their cultural expressions. They are much more interested in dressing like Balinese and telling everyone on social media they are Balinese instead of obtaining the high level of knowledge needed to understand our complex culture and religion.”
Rio Helmi, an Indonesian photographer whose work focuses on the interaction between Indigenous peoples and their environment, agrees.
He fears time is working against Balinese culture.
“As to the strength of the culture, I think there is some truth to that,” he told Al Jazeera. “But a lot of it is about identity rather than involvement in the deeper side of the culture and its values. What I am seeing now feels more like form over function. People always repeat the phrase ‘tri hita karana’ – maintaining a good relationship between man and God, man and nature, man and the environment – but often it feels like a slogan, a bandage to cover up bad things like people building on sacred land. We have to be careful about making generalisations as there are still many people who live traditionally. But the power of money is everywhere.”
Ceremonies take place every day in Bali, including in popular tourist locations [Ian Neubauer/Al Jazeera]
Today, multi-storey hotels and condominiums many times taller than coconut trees are popping up across the island’s traditional rice fields. However the biggest display of the disparity between form and function, Helmi says, will be on display during the ogah-ogah procession in Ubud, the spiritual heart of Bali that has expanded from a sleepy cultural village into a bustling tourist hotspot, where there will be loudspeakers, souvenir vendors and bandstands.
“It will be a real show put on for tourists, whereas in the villages the events will be about introspection, the sense of the year coming to an end and chasing the demons out. It is their moment, their culture. It is not a show,” Helmi said.
But now, Prabowo Subianto, one of Soeharto’s most feared generals and his former son-in-law, looks set to become the Southeast Asian country’s next president.
The former general claimed victory on Wednesday night after unofficial “quick counts” showed he had won more than 50 percent of the vote and was significantly ahead of his two rivals, Anies Baswedan and Ganjar Pranowo.
“If Prabowo is president, it will embolden many people. No one will be scared of committing human rights abuses, because he has avoided all the allegations made against him and managed to cover them up,” Muhammad said, recounting how the Kopassus Special Forces, under Prabowo’s command, cracked down on a protest at Jakarta’s Trisakti University in May 1998.
Four students were killed, and dozens more were wounded.
The incident sparked widespread outrage and following Soeharto’s fall, resulted in Prabowo’s dishonourable discharge from the military.
The former general never faced trial over Trisakti or the 22 abductions that took place during that tumultuous year, although some of his men were tried and convicted. Thirteen activists have never been found.
Four people were killed and dozens wounded after a military crackdown on protests at Jakarta’s Trisakti University in May 1998 [File: Reuters]
For Muhammad, 72-year-old Prabowo’s probable victory in Wednesday’s election spells perilous times for Indonesia.
“It is so dangerous, and Indonesia will become a very dark democracy with Prabowo in charge,” he told Al Jazeera.
Following orders
Born in 1951 in Jakarta, Prabowo is the son of prominent Indonesian economist Sumitro Djojohadikusumo. He enrolled in the Indonesian Military Academy in 1970 and after graduation, went on to join the elite Kopassus unit of the military.
The general was a close ally of Soeharto, having married the former leader’s daughter Siti Hediati Hariyadi, popularly known as Titiek Soeharto, in 1983. The couple divorced 15 years later.
By May of 1998, when anti-Chinese riots broke out across Indonesia, Prabowo was leading Kopassus.
The riots – which human rights activists say were orchestrated by the military in order to divert attention from public anger against Soeharto amid the Asian Financial Crisis and economic collapse – saw looters burn Chinese-owned businesses and carry out a campaign of terror that included hundreds of killings, beatings and mass rape of ethnic Chinese women.
One female activist, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, said many of those carrying out the rapes had been soldiers. “One of the worst cases I handled was a Chinese girl who had been raped with a broken bottle. I am still traumatised by it all these years later,” she said.
Prabowo was widely believed to have been involved in instigating the riots, she said.
The United States imposed a travel ban on Prabowo over the allegations, which was only lifted in 2020 after his appointment as defence minister by outgoing President Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi.
Prabowo has denied involvement in the rights abuses, but in 2014, admitted to Al Jazeera that he had helped abduct activists during the Soeharto era. He said that he had been following orders and that the kidnappings were legal.
“I carried out operations that were legal at the time. If a new government said I was at fault, I was here to take full responsibility,” he said.
In addition to the alleged abuses in Jakarta, Prabowo has also been accused of involvement in military crimes in East Timor, which Indonesia invaded and occupied in 1975, as well as in the eastern province of West Papua, where conflict has been rumbling for decades.
The allegations against Prabowo in East Timor include claims that he led a mission in 1978 to capture Nicolau dos Reis Lobato, the country’s first prime minister who had held the post for just nine days before the Indonesian invasion.
Prabowo was also accused of commanding the special forces team responsible for the so-called Kraras massacre in East Timor in 1983 in which more than 200 people were killed.
The female activist told Al Jazeera that Indonesian soldiers in East Timor were also accused of using “rape as a weapon”.
Prabowo has also denied any wrongdoing in the territory, which finally secured its independence after Soeharto’s fall.
‘Just opinions’
After his expulsion from the military, Prabowo went into business with his brother Hashim Djojohadikusumo and currently owns a number of firms, including paper pulp and plantation companies in East Kalimantan in Indonesian Borneo, as well as oil, gas, coal and palm oil companies.
He was the wealthiest candidate in Wednesday’s election, with reported assets of more than $127m. As well as his mansion on the outskirts of Jakarta, he owns a guarded mountain retreat in Hambalang in West Java, where he rides thoroughbred horses and has a pet falcon.
In successive bids for top political office, Prabowo has regularly reinvented himself. This time he was packaged as a ‘cure grandpa’ [Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters]
During the presidential campaign, Prabowo sought again to reinvent himself, with his team cultivating an online persona of a “cute” grandfather in a bid to appeal to Indonesia’s younger voters, many of whom are too young to remember the Soeharto era and make up just over 50 percent of the electorate.
The campaign appears to have worked, with several voters telling Al Jazeera they did not believe the allegations against him.
“Opinions about alleged human rights violations committed by Prabowo are just opinions that are always brought up by his rivals in every presidential election to steal the public’s sympathy,” said Bertrand Silverius Sitohang, a lecturer in civic education and law at Santo Thomas Catholic University in Medan in North Sumatra, which was one of the epicentres of the anti-Chinese riots.
“However, what really happened was that none of the legal or disciplinary processes were able to prove that he was the perpetrator of any human rights violations,” added Sitohang, who said he voted for the former general.
Prabowo also benefitted from his association with Jokowi who remains enormously popular with an approval rating of about 80 percent.
The general twice lost the presidency to Jokowi, but after challenging the 2019 results in court, sparking nationwide riots that left nine people dead, he made his peace with Jokowi and joined his cabinet as defence minister.
This time around, he had Jokowi’s eldest son, 36-year-old Gibran Rakabuming Raka, as his running mate, and while the outgoing president did not formally endorse the pair, they were seen to have his implicit support.
Soeharto eventually resigned in May 1998, ending more than 30 years of often-brutal rule [File: Reuters]
Sahata Manalu, a lawyer in Medan, said it was that Jokowi connection that won Prabowo his vote.
“I am a Jokowi fanatic, so I have to support Jokowi’s political direction. I wanted to vote for Prabowo because he is a good man and a patriot, but the main reason was because of Jokowi,” Manalu said, adding that the human rights violations should have been levelled at Soeharto “because he was the one who gave the orders”.
Meli Nadeak, a domestic helper in Medan, also voted for Prabowo.
For her, it was because the controversial general was “Si Gemoy”, which means “cute” in Indonesia.
Nadeak, who is 25, said that she had watched all of Prabowo’s campaign videos on TikTok and even made some herself to encourage voters to go to the polls and support him.
She said she found his policies appealing too. They include promises to create 19 million jobs over the next five years and provide free school lunches and milk to children and mothers across Indonesia.
“Hopefully, there will not be any human rights violations,” she said.
The official election result is expected by March 20 at the latest, and neither Anies nor Ganjar have yet conceded.
Black-clad activists hold yellow cards to symbolise a warning for President Joko Widodo, who gave his implicit support to Prabowo despite the former general’s dark past [Dita Alangkara/AP Photo]
Analysts say while a Prabowo presidency is unlikely to see Indonesia return to full-fledged autocracy, it could further erode the democracy that so many – including Muhammad and his fellow activists – fought for in 1998.
“Prabowo has had an obsession with the presidency since he was in the military and has changed strategy several times over,” Ian Wilson, a lecturer in politics and security studies at Perth’s Murdoch University, told Al Jazeera.
“He will probably not be a fascist dictator in the strict sense, but he is hostile to the democratic process and sees democracy as a means to an end. As president, he will likely do what Jokowi has done and work on how democracy can be more procedural and shrink the space for conversation.”
Prabowo “has never been democratic, and he has never been held to account”, Wilson added.
Prabowo Subianto claimed victory in Indonesia’s presidential election, ahead of an official result due by March 20. Here’s a look at who he is – and his controversial past.
Jakarta, Indonesia – Indonesia will see almost 10,000 people, including some from the country’s ethnic Chinese minority, competing in Wednesday’s general elections to become one of 580 lawmakers in the national parliament.
According to Indonesia’s General Elections Commission (KPU), there are 9,917 candidates representing 18 political parties across 38 provinces. Among those running are Indonesians of Chinese descent, who accounted for about 2.8 million of Indonesia’s then-237 million people, in the 2010 national census. The more recent census in 2020 did not list its ethnicities.
For Chinese Indonesians, democracy has afforded them political rights that were once restricted.
During more than 30 years under the rule of Soeharto, who resigned following mass protests in 1998, Chinese Indonesians were not allowed to publicly celebrate the Lunar New Year and assimilation policies were introduced to make them more “Indonesian”, effectively turning them into second-class citizens. Many turned to business and the private sector to earn a living after they were limited from government positions.
“Politics is not for everyone,” said Taufiq Tanasaldy, a senior lecturer in Indonesian and Asian studies at the University of Tasmania. “Particularly for the Chinese who had endured decades of discriminatory policies under the Soeharto regime.”
Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese minority can now celebrate the Lunar New Year and are no longer a target of official assimilation policies [Randy Mulyanto/Al Jazeera]
But Taufiq said interest had “grown post-Soeharto due to political reforms and policies aimed at eradicating discriminatory practices”, referring to equal opportunities for ethnic Chinese to run for office and vote for their preferred candidates.
“The elections or appointments of several Chinese individuals to national and regional politics sparked this growing interest. The visibility of their initial ‘success’ has been important to the Chinese community,” he told Al Jazeera.
Among the prominent Chinese who have gone into politics is former Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, popularly known as Ahok. He was later jailed for blasphemy over comments made on the campaign trail and has adopted a lower profile since his release.
“Representation has been steady, certainly not getting worse,” Taufiq said.
But for many Chinese Indonesian voters, Taufiq said, “parties with nationalist platforms are more attractive compared to those championing sectarian values … particularly at the national level”.
With more than 270 million people, Indonesia has almost 205 million eligible voters participating in the 2024 poll. The general elections are set to take place just four days after the Lunar New Year. February 14 is also Ash Wednesday, a holy day for Indonesians who are Catholic.
Despite representation, the current system of proportional representation could disadvantage some candidates who now have to campaign directly for seats.
R Siti Zuhro, a research professor of political science at Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), says the open-list made it “very difficult to compete” for some candidates compared with the previous system where votes went to the party rather than the individual candidates.
“It is more dependent on the legislative candidate [to do the work] – either their effort or money – in carrying out tactical strategies, not the party,” she told Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera spoke to three Chinese Indonesians who are running for the national parliament.
Fuidy Luckman, PKB
Fuidy Luckman is a candidate for the Muslim-based National Awakening Party (PKB) which supports Anies Baswedan and Muhaimin Iskandar for president and vice president, as Muhaimin is its current chairperson.
One of PKB’s founding figures was Indonesia’s late president Abdurrahman Wahid, popularly known as Gus Dur, who lifted the ban on public Lunar New Year celebrations while in office in 2000.
Fuidy Luckman in his office in North Jakarta. He says Chinese Indonesians should not be afraid to get involved in politics [Randy Mulyanto/Al Jazeera]
Originally from Singkawang in Indonesia’s West Kalimantan province, 61-year-old Fuidy moved to Jakarta for university in 1983 and has lived there ever since.
He campaigned in some of the poorest parts of the sprawling capital, meeting residents and also posting videos on TikTok and Instagram.
Fuidy, who owns a company in the wood industry in Jakarta, urged Chinese Indonesians to come out and vote and take part in Indonesia’s “festival of democracy”.
“We ethnic Chinese do not need to feel allergic to politics because we live in Indonesia,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Do not ask to be recognised as Indonesians when we instead put aside the [democratic] processes.”
If he gets elected, Fuidy wants to pursue programmes related to “justice” and “equality” – focusing on more affordable education and healthcare.
Mery Sutedjo, Partai Buruh
Mery Sutedjo joined Partai Buruh (Labour Party), whose founders include Indonesia’s various national trade union confederations.
The party is headed by labour activist Said Iqbal and has not officially supported any presidential candidate.
Mery, who runs a housing construction company, says she found Partai Buruh to be the right platform to push for better social welfare and law enforcement for the Indonesian working class, including blue-collar and white-collar workers.
Born in Medan in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, the 54-year-old moved to Jakarta more than 30 years ago for university and is hoping to win one of the capital’s seats in the national parliament.
As part of her campaign strategy, Mery hands out her business cards to people she meets and introduces herself. She has also asked for her family, friends and business contacts for their support.
“I hope there’s an opportunity and possibility for people like me – for an ordinary female Chinese minority without political experience and background to run for office,” she told Al Jazeera.
Mery Sutedjo is running for the Indonesian Labour Party [Handout/Mary Sutedjo]
Redi Nusantara, Perindo
A candidate with the Perindo Party, Redi Nusantara is running in Indonesia’s Central Java province.
Perindo is backing the presidential pair of Ganjar Pranowo and Mahfud MD. It backed outgoing President Joko Widodo when the leader won his second term in 2019.
The 55-year-old, who owns a factory making metal racks for cabling, wants to attract more foreign investments into Indonesia and develop a tax regime that encourages manufacturers to use domestic products rather than imported components that arrive in the country through special economic zones.
Originally from the provincial capital Semarang, Redi is targeting the country’s ethnic Chinese and business communities, as well as first-time voters. He is also hoping to change the minds of those who might be planning to abstain from voting.
Redi also appeared on video podcasts, talking about entrepreneurship.
He encourages Chinese Indonesians – especially the younger generation – to enter national politics and “fix it from within”.
“For all of us ethnic Chinese, especially young people, we must understand Indonesian politics,” Redi told Al Jazeera.
“Because if we, the Chinese community, do not understand the parliament, we will always be the cash cow of the Indonesian economy,” he said, hoping increased political participation will help change the lingering stereotype that ethnic Chinese care only about doing business.
Bali, Indonesia – For the last few months, 47-year-old Erfin Dewi Sudanto has been trying to sell his kidney.
One of thousands of candidates running in Indonesia’s regional legislative council elections on February 14, he had hoped to raise $20,000 to help fund his political campaign.
“This is not just a sensation. I am serious. I am minus, no property. The only way [to fund my campaign] is selling my kidney,” Erfin, standing for the National Mandate Party in Banyuwangi in East Java, told Al Jazeera after his social media appeal went viral.
With campaigning continuing for two months, the cost of running in Indonesia’s election is expected to be higher than ever this year. While political parties usually provide some support for logistics and witnesses to oversee the count, candidates must find money for the rest – from stump speeches to campaign T-shirts and memorabilia.
Erfin estimates he needs as much as $50,000 and reveals that much of that will go to providing what he describes as “tips” to secure the support of potential voters.
In other words, vote buying.
Vote buying is illegal under Indonesian law. The penalty is a maximum fine of $3,000 and three years in jail.
But the practice remains pervasive.
“I personally don’t want to buy the vote. [But] it’s rooted in our society. At least [a candidate] prepares 50,000 rupiah to 100,000 rupiah ($3-7) for each voter [to win],” Erfin said.
He says vote buying continues due to the lack of monitoring by officials and that he has been left with no choice but to join in.
“No one is enforcing the law. The General Election Supervisory Agency (BAWASLU) seems to fall on deaf ears,” he said. BASWALU did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment on the allegations.
Burhanuddin Muhtadi, a leading researcher and executive director of Indikator Politik Indonesia, told Al Jazeera that, based on his research, at least a third of Indonesian voters had been offered voting incentives, such as money, or food like rice or cooking oil, either ‘very often’, ‘often’ or ‘rarely’.
Supporters of presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto and vice presidential candidate Gibran Rakabuming Raka get free eggs following an election campaign rally on Saturday [Adek Berry/AFP]
During the last two elections in 2014 and 2019, Burhanuddin conducted nationwide surveys on vote buying in relation to the campaign for the national legislature.
In the 2019 election, the number of voters affected in that way would have been equivalent to 63.5 million out of the total 192 million voters.
“For the legislative candidate, the rate is around 20,000-50,000 rupiah (up to $4) per vote,” he said. As a result, some candidates, particularly in densely-populated islands like Java, might have to prepare as much as 10 billion rupiah, or about $683,000, just to buy votes.
The price is even higher in oil and gas-rich regions. One vote in those places can cost $150, according to Burhanuddin.
The figures place Indonesia third in the world in terms of money politics after Uganda and Benin, which is double the average of money politics globally. “It is like a new normal,” Burhanuddin said in his report.
Burhan believes part of the reason for continued vote buying is the change of a proportional representation system from closed to open-list.
Under the closed-list system, which was in place before 2008, the party determined who would get the seats it had won. With open-list, candidates win seats according to the number of votes they get.
“Before the system was applied, there was only limited money in political practice. But after it applies, every candidate competes to win the personal vote. Even between them in the same party,” he said.
‘Win at any cost’
Rian Ernest Tanudjaja, 36, a legislative candidate from the Golkar Party, spent $83,000 on his campaign in 2019.
“I needed the budget mostly for canvassing door to door, volunteers’ incentives, printing calendars and ballot samples,” he said.
Ernest is opposed to vote buying but says the reasons it persists are not related to the voting system. “We cannot only blame the proportional open-list system. Although we change the system, the mentality of the candidates still wants to win at any cost. The vote buying will still be carried out,” he said.
He says eradicating the practice is not only about enforcing the law but also about educating voters.
“People should not vote for a candidate who gives [money] staple food, because this person will only focus on earning the money back through corruption [once he is elected],” he said.
Habiburokhman, the deputy chairman of the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), said in December that the cost of campaigning this year could reach as much as $1.5 million in some seats. Most of the money will go towards campaign props and souvenirs to “guard and gather” the voters, he was reported as saying by the Kompas daily, Indonesia’s most respected daily newspaper.
The same month, Indonesia’s anticorruption agency said it was investigating reports from the Indonesian Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (INTRACT) on dubious transactions worth more than $63m allegedly sourced from illegal mining and gambling activities ahead of the 2024 elections.
Last month, it said it was investigating suspicious transactions related to about 100 legislative candidates.
With the high cost of campaigning, some have tried crowdfunding, but it is an uphill battle.
Manik Marganamahendra, a legislative candidate from the Perindo Party in Jakarta, has secured $12,700 through crowdfunding. “I invited my former classmate in campus, high school and colleague in office to an event, where I pitched them my campaign [budget plan] and eventually, they donated,” said the former chief of the student executive board of University Indonesia, who once called the parliament a “Council of Traitors”. He has used the money mostly to print banners.
On the campaign trail, Manik openly discusses money politics. While some voters were aware it was wrong, most still asked for the “tip”.
“For them, elections are only a momentum to earn money,” he said.
Adiguna Daniel Jerash, 23, a parliamentary candidate in Jakarta with the Indonesian Solidarity Party, has been leaning on Instagram, TikTok and other social media platforms to raise funds for his campaign.
“I was inspired by Obama, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez,” he told Al Jazeera. “They are a trendsetter and a proof that crowd-funding can be done.”
Rian Ernest makes his pitch to residents in a lower-income neighbourhood of Jakarta. He is opposed to vote buying [Dita Alangkara/AP]
However, it has proved a challenge for Jerash. “Indonesia is not yet ready to crowdfund a politician,” he said. After weeks of campaigning on Instagram, he said he had only collected $1,000.
The first-time politician is not giving up and is also using his social media platforms to campaign against vote buying. “I educated my voters about money politics that candidates should not use a tip [to buy votes],” he said. Some of his audience supports his idea. “But Indonesian netizens were mostly annoyed with it,” he said.
In the last week before the election, Erfin had not found a buyer for his kidney. Under Indonesian law, the sale of organs is illegal and punishable by as many as 10 years in prison.
In the scramble for votes, he fears that his lack of cash may have left him at a disadvantage.
“Usually, vote buying begins the last week before the voting day. The candidate will massively distribute the money to gather voters,” he said.
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