hen students from dozens of universities marched to the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle in Central Jakarta on June 12 under the banner “Menuju Indonesia Bangkrut” (Toward a bankrupt Indonesia), the government’s first instinct was not to engage in what they were saying but to manage the optics of their presence.
More than 6,000 police officers and soldiers were deployed, partly to help block routes to the Presidential Palace Complex. The intelligence chief, Muhammad Herindra, called on citizens to “guard national unity”: a phrase in the political lexicon that is rarely directed at those doing the suppressing.
The students’ demands are reasonable: lower fuel and food prices, be transparent about the free nutritious meal program (whose former head the President fired in early June after he was named a graft suspect) and return the military to the barracks.
These are the demands of ordinary people watching the rupiah collapse to record lows, household costs rise and fuel hiked 32 percent, absorbing whatever goodwill subsidy the government had left. Whether we agree with every demand is beside the point. These are legitimate public grievances expressed through legitimate public action.
Yet from multiple directions, the response has been to discredit the messengers rather than listen to the actual message.
On June 19, counterprotesters were deployed to convey support for Prabowo’s flagship programs. While politicians insinuated that the protests were the work of an opposition seeking to exploit public discontent, a claim that circulates because it is politically useful, the State Intelligence Agency waded in with its unity rhetoric.
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These are the familiar instruments of a political class that has learned across several administrations that it is easier to question the legitimacy of dissent than to respond to its substance.
