A dead dictator’s unwelcome comeback in Indonesia

By Karishma Vaswani

As deepfakes go, it’s not a great one. Even so, the viral video of Indonesia’s former president and dictator Suharto that was created using artificial intelligence took the world’s most populous Muslim nation by storm. It racked up millions of views on social media, and prompted hand-wringing about the dangers of using this kind of technology.

“I am President Suharto, the second president of Indonesia, inviting you to elect representatives of the people from Golkar,” the figure in the video says. The man behind it, Erwin Aksa, is a member of Golkar, the political party the former leader presided over for the 32 years he was in power. It is the nation’s oldest operating party, stemming from the New Order era, one of the most corrupt dictatorships in Southeast Asia’s history. The party was hugely powerful and influential, and all government employees were expected to vote for it.

Turns out running a country is pretty easy, when you control everything. Golkar hasn’t had that kind of power since Suharto fell amid the unrest that engulfed the archipelago in 1998. But as citizens get ready to elect their next president on Feb. 14, Aksa said on Instagram that the video was intended to remind people of their responsibility to make the right decisions.

Suharto’s appeal, despite his authoritarianism, is not new. During the 2014 elections, I travelled to his hometown in Kemusuk in Central Java, as millions prepared to directly elect only their third president since the transition from dictatorship to democracy began. It was hard to miss the love that many still have for the man they affectionately call “the father of the nation.” At the time, T-shirts featuring his face were being sold, with slogans in Javanese saying: “It was better in my time, wasn’t it?”

This desire for a return to perceived stability is not unusual, but it is worrying given Indonesia’s importance in regional power dynamics. It’s the world’s most populous Muslim country, and Southeast Asia’s largest economy. It is a critical partner for the US in its ambitions to curtail China’s rise, and is also a valuable modern Muslim ally. A creep toward authoritarianism, however small, must be avoided at all cost.

Indonesians look at their young democracy differently from the Western world, which has traditionally prioritized aspects like freedom of the press and checks and balances in government, argues Deasy Simandjuntak, visiting researcher at the Singapore-based Institute of Southeast Asian Studies-Yusof Ishak Institute. They look at the government’s performance, and whether policy aims have been fulfilled. Social welfare and economic development trump democracy and civil rights — which is understandable when you look at the size and scale of the country. It is massive: From west to east it spans the distance between London and Baghdad, with three time zones and hundreds of different ethnic groups and languages. Even in one of the richest parts of the country — the capital Jakarta — very basic needs, like putting food on the table, can often be hard to meet.

These levels of hardship provide an explanation for the rise in popularity of one of the presidential candidates in this election, Prabowo Subianto. He’s a former special-forces commander with outsized influence during the New Order and was dishonorably discharged in the aftermath of its collapse for alleged human-rights violations. For a time, he was Suharto’s son-in-law. Prabowo is offering economic stability and a continuation of the rule under the current leader Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi.

Prabowo is leading in the polls, although early indications suggest a run-off is likely. Standing against him are two former governors — Anies Baswedan of Jakarta and Ganjar Pranowo of Central Java — who have yet to create much traction with the public.

It can’t be overstated just how tumultuous the period preceding Suharto’s fall was, and the chaos that ensued in its aftermath. I saw the beginnings of the economic mayhem caused by the Asian Financial Crisis that culminated in deadly riots that eventually forced Suharto to step down. At that point, it looked like the scenario many of us feared could almost happen: the total disintegration of an impossible state that had been held together not by any sense of nationhood — but the idea that this disparate group of people spread out across 17,000 islands could somehow be united in a country.

Much of that was down to the former dictator’s iron-fisted rule, and his use of the military to quell unrest. But Indonesia since has become the poster child for democracy in Southeast Asia, and has had a remarkably successful transition after the initial years of disorder. It was out of this new and refreshed political system that the president for the past decade, Joko Widodo, or Jokowi, emerged — ostensibly a man of the people, a democrat who was not connected to the cronyism and capitalism of the previous era.

Prabowo, 72, and Jokowi, 62 are highly intelligent political operators with polar opposite public personalities — one a swaggering ex-general, the other a soft-spoken furniture maker. They each offer a type of charisma that appeals to a large number of Indonesians. Prabowo has his own party and isn’t even a member of Golkar, whose current candidate doesn’t rate compared to a long-dead dictator.

Now, history is repeating itself. Jokowi’s eldest son Gibran Rakabuming Raka is Prabowo’s choice of running mate in what is seen as a sign that nepotism and cronyism, hallmarks of the Suharto era, are returning to haunt yet another generation. Jokowi defeated Prabowo twice for the presidency, but they have since made a pragmatic peace and the former general is currently defense minister. The worries about the damage to democracy have led to rumors and speculation that high-profile members of Jokowi’s cabinet are considering resigning, although the president has issued stern denials.

This kind of active resistance by parliamentarians and civil society is essential, and should continue. Indonesia’s democracy is in its infancy. If it was a person, it would barely be out of university, just starting to make their way in the world. Learning from the past is instructive: Bringing that period back is not.