Source UCA

HONG KONG, SAR: Indonesia’s president Prabowo Subianto will have watched mass protests sweep the streets of his country in recent weeks with understandable nervousness.

It will not have escaped his memory that mass protests and violent unrest in response to the 1997 Asian financial crisis toppled his father-in-law, Indonesia’s dictator Suharto, who ruled the country with an iron fist for 31 years.

Bangladesh’s long-time autocratic ruler, former prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s fall from power in the wake of widespread protests and deadly crackdowns last year, also must not be far from his mind.

And just last week, protests and an explosion of fury against the corrupt political class led to the fall of Nepal’s government and the burning down of government buildings, party offices, and private homes of politicians throughout the country.

Anger at perks for politicians, low wages, and high unemployment sparked the recent protests in Indonesia, which left at least 10 people dead and hundreds detained.

Over the past 25 years or so, Indonesia has garnered worldwide admiration for its successful and peaceful transition from a brutal dictatorship to a vibrant democracy.

In a country of its size — the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, the largest archipelago, the third largest democracy, and the fourth most populous country, with 285 million people across its 17,000 islands — governing will always be a challenge, and doing so with a genuine democratic mandate is to be applauded.

While the presidency of the moderate Islamic scholar Abdurrahman Wahid (or “Gus Dur”), who led Nahdlatul Ulama — Indonesia’s largest Muslim mass movement — in 1999 may have briefly loosened the grip that the military held on the presidential office, the 2014 election of Joko Widodo (known as “Jokowi”), Prabowo’s immediate predecessor, appeared to break that grip.

In the post-Suharto era, his immediate successors, who Indonesia’s legislature appointed rather than taking office by direct election, included his former vice-president B.J. Habibie, Gus Dur, and Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of Indonesia’s founding father Sukarno, whom Suharto toppled.

Indonesia’s first directly elected president was former general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (known as “SBY”), who served two terms, from 2004 to 2014.

Finally, just over a decade ago, Indonesia elected Jokowi, the owner of a successful furniture business in Surakarta (Solo) in Central Java, who had risen from Mayor of Solo to Governor of Jakarta and appeared to be in touch with the people.

Yet Prabowo’s election just under a year ago was a democratic and human rights setback and an unravelling of this trajectory.

As Suharto’s son-in-law, his very presence in the presidential palace, the Istana Merdeka, harks back to the dark days of the Suharto dictatorship, when some of Indonesia’s bloodiest crimes took place.

His notorious record as a general with his hands soaked in blood — responsible for the abduction and torture of democracy activists across the country and for atrocity crimes and massacres in Timor Leste and West Papua following Indonesia’s invasion and occupation of both territories — should in itself have disqualified him for the presidency.

The alliances he made with radical Islamists in his two previous attempts to run for the presidency also imperiled Indonesia’s fragile tradition of religious pluralism and moderate interpretation of Islam.

This revived memories of widespread Muslim-Christian religious violence in the Maluku, Lombok, and Sulawesi regions of Indonesia following the fall of Suharto, which had already shaken Indonesia’s religious traditions.

This violence caused the death of thousands and the displacement of some 300,000 people.

For a brief moment in 1999 and 2000, these regions descended into an unprecedented level of inter-religious bloodshed, of neighbors killing each other, leaving deep, unhealed scars in their aftermath.

Sooner or later, it was always likely that the people — who, despite his track record, elected him — would rise in protest.

And once again, economic factors and resentment at elite politicians’ privileges — factors responsible for growing tension across Asia, from the Philippines to Thailand to Nepal — triggered such protests.

But it is unlikely that his responses to the protests — replacing the finance minister, reshuffling other ministers, and cutting legislators’ perks — will be enough to quell the fury.

The fear is that Prabowo will ultimately resort to his old tactics of bloody crackdowns on the protesters, as he did repeatedly during his military career.

For the past 15 years or more, I have followed Indonesia closely. I worked actively on Indonesia for more than a decade, travelled many times throughout the archipelago — from Jakarta to Surabaya, from Lombok and Bali to Sumatra and West Papua, from Kalimantan to Sulawesi and beyond — and spent part of a sabbatical learning the language, Bahasa Indonesia.

I wrote many reports and articles, including one titled Indonesia: Pluralism in Peril, just over 10 years ago. It is a nation I love deeply — for its diversity, natural beauty, culture, heritage, and food, and for its hitherto successful transition to democracy.

But it is a country that is in danger — and needs our prayers and the international community’s attention.

In its politics, it needs to build on the broader democracy that Jokowi symbolized but that never quite emerged — a democracy that is genuinely accountable to the people and no longer in the grip of old elite families or the military.

And in its religious diversity — as the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation — it must rediscover its tradition of a moderate interpretation of Islam, a celebration of religious pluralism that includes respect for other religious traditions, the true meaning of its guiding ‘Pancasila’ philosophy, and a rejection of radical Islamist intolerance.

It still has the capacity to do so, as I witnessed when I was briefly in Jakarta about a month before the protests. I describe here what I experienced in the tranquility of the hills and the beauty of the beaches of Bali.

But it faces many challenges along the way.

Its friends — among whom I count myself — must try to help it overcome these challenges and ensure that Indonesia becomes the multi-religious, pluralistic, truly democratic, free and open society we believe it is and has the potential to be.

To achieve that, Prabowo must tame his authoritarian tendencies, reject his alliances with more extreme Islamist groups, return to his pluralistic instincts, and — in his old age — develop his paternal or grandfatherly nature, which he displayed in his election campaign, to prepare Indonesia for a more genuine democracy that truly evolves away from the political, military, business or religious elites, and represents the aspirations of its people.

Specifically, Prabowo should consider the 17 short-term and eight long-term proposals put forward by protesters and civil society organizations known as “17+8.” These include strengthening the anti-corruption commission and reforming the police and political parties.

He should also review the more than 700 discriminatory regulations issued in the name of Sharia law, such as restrictions on the construction of non-Muslim places of worship and the mandatory requirement for women to wear the hijab in some regions.

Asia and the world need Indonesia to secure its democracy and to step up to its responsibilities in the world.

In a world where authoritarianism is on the rise and democracy is on the back foot, we cannot afford to let Indonesia — a bright, albeit flickering light — slide into authoritarianism, intolerance, instability, conflict, and further human rights violations.