What will US-Indonesia relations be like under new President Prabowo? :NPR

SEOUL, South Korea — Prabowo Subianto’s path to the Indonesian presidency now appears clear. After winning his country’s election in February, he has avoided legal challenges to his election, and the high court Reject appeals for a new vote. and accusations of fraud. president biden and other foreign heads of state have sent their congratulations on his election.

But in a year of big elections around the world, big questions remain about the consequences of the vote in the world’s third-largest democracy: Has Prabowo turned the page, or will he drag Indonesia back to its authoritarian past? And what will relations be like between Prabowo and the United States, the country that first trained and supported him and then imposed sanctions on him for alleged human rights abuses?

On April 22, Indonesia’s Constitutional Court dismissed a petition by the two losing candidates in the election alleging widespread vote buying and government interference. But for many observers, Prabowo’s rise to the presidency remains problematic.

“I think we can easily see, actually, that these national elections were definitely the least free and least fair of all the elections we’ve had in the post-Suharto period,” he argues. Edward Aspinallexpert on Indonesian politics at the Australian National University in Canberra.

The fall of former President Suharto in 1998, after three decades of authoritarian rule, led to a period of democratic reforms, during which elections were generally considered fair.

However, outgoing president Joko Widodo removed restrictions on presidential power. Critics allege that Gagged Widodo the nation’s anti-corruption watchdog in 2019 by stripping it of its independence and converting it into a government body, and maneuvered his 37-year-old son as Prabowo’s vice president. Experts suggest Prabowo may not need to roll back democratic reforms any further.

Bivitri Susantiprofessor at Indonesia’s Jentera Law School, says that given the Biden administration’s policy focus Regarding global democracy, the United States should speak out against “dynastic politics.”

“If the United States really wants to build an alliance on democracy and the rejection of authoritarianism,” he says, “I think this is a big step towards authoritarianism, and for that it has to be publicly criticized.”

It is far from clear what kind of president Prabowo will turn out to be, and even critics admit that he has a chance to show that he has changed from his military days, when he allegedly committed serious abuses against civilians.

During the election campaign, Prabowo declared that “power and sovereignty are in the hands of the Indonesian people” and that the future of the country would be decided by “one person, one vote.”

But in the past, Aspinall notes, Prabowo has disparaged elections as “too costly and exhausting” and argued that open opposition to the government “was not compatible with Indonesia’s national culture, which emphasized harmony.”

Similarly, observers are looking for signs of whether Prabowo’s early attachment to the United States – or his later estrangement from that country – will affect his relations with Washington.

Prabowo graduate He studied secondary school at the American School in London, where his family lived in exile. He received special forces training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina (renamed Ft. Liberty in 2022) and officer training at what was then Fort Benning, Georgia, now Ft. Moore, in the 1980s.

But Prabowo was removed in 1998 as head of Kopassus, Indonesia’s special forces command, for his role in alleged human rights abuses, including murder of civilians during Indonesia’s invasion and occupation of East Timor in 1975 and until 1999, and the disappearance of student activists during the anti-Suharto protests in 1998.

Prabowo was never prosecuted for his actions, as part of what Aspinall calls a “Faustian bargain” between the incoming civilian government and Suharto’s outgoing generals that gave the generals immunity in exchange for giving up their control of politics.

Prabowo denied the accusations against him. But “there was ample evidence that Kopassus and others were essentially acting as a criminal enterprise. Death squads, if you will,” he says. Tim Rieserformer foreign policy aide to former Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy.

Rieser helped develop the Leahy Law, which prohibits the United States government from assisting foreign military forces implicated in serious human rights violations. And Leahy himself argued, Rieser says, that “if ever there was a case for applying the Leahy law,” it was Indonesia.

As a result of the law, the United States cut ties with Kopassus in 1999 and banned Prabowo from entering the United States from 2000 until he became Minister of Defense in 2020.

(The United States has considered whether to apply the Leahy Law to the Israeli military for human rights violations against Palestinian civilians, but has so far imposed no sanctions).

Rieser describes Prabowo as a dilemma for the United States between its geopolitical interests and the values ​​it proclaims.

“We need partners and Indonesia is a country that the United States wants to be a partner with,” he says. “On the other hand, I think we make a mistake, and have made it too often, when we don’t uphold the core values ​​and principles that people look for in us.”

Rieser notes that part of the problem is competing priorities between branches of government, such as the Pentagon and the State Department.

Congress banned U.S. training of the Indonesian military from 1992 to 1995, but the Pentagon continued their training under their own separately funded program, in what former Rep. Nancy Pelosi called a clear “circumvention of Congress.”

Another is the change of historical priorities. The United States supported Suharto during the Cold War to fight communism. He asked her to resign once the Cold War was over, when the Clinton administration was trying to promote democracy and in 1998 riots broke out in Indonesia against authoritarianism, corruption and economic difficulties.

Many Indonesians are too young to remember this story.

But, Rieser maintains, the U.S. government will hopefully learn from its Cold War-era experiences and, he says, “when someone like this (Prabowo) comes to power, for now we will continue to stand up for what we believe in.” ” and publicly support Indonesians fighting for democracy.

For now, however, world leaders, including President Biden, have only sent their congratulations to the president-elect.

Yosef Riadi contributed to this report in Jakarta.