Pariah to president, Prabowo may bring new dark days to Indonesia

Former General Prabowo Subianto was sworn in as Indonesia’s eighth president on October 20. Twenty-five years ago he was a pariah, and for good reason.

He faced accusations of human rights abuses in Papua and East Timor, and in 1998, special forces troops under his command abducted democracy activists in Jakarta, 13 of whom have never been seen again. Those who did return had been tortured.

The students had been calling for the resignation of President Suharto, Prabowo’s father-in-law, who finally stepped down in May 1998 after widespread rioting that many believe Prabowo helped engineer. Then, backed by troops under his command, Prabowo tried to storm the presidential palace, gun in hand, to threaten the new president, BJ Habibie.

Prabowo never went on trial for the disappearances of the activists, though he was banned from traveling to the United States for two decades.

And his cherished military career quickly ended – he was dismissed from the army for “misinterpreting orders.” Disgraced, and seen as embodying the violence and repression of Suharto’s regime, Prabowo went into voluntary exile in Jordan. It seemed he had no future in the democratic Reformasi (reformation) system that began to emerge from the ruins of the repressive New Order.

But Prabowo was far from finished. His rehabilitation and extraordinary climb to the presidency may now signal the end of Indonesia’s fragile, aspirational liberal democracy and a return to the New Order model.

The end of Reformasi?

It is clear enough that Prabowo has no enthusiasm for democracy. He has said, for example, that it “very, very tiring” and “very, very messy and costly.”

Gerindra, the political party he founded and leads, even has, as its number one mission statement,