Jokowi Secured Prabowo-Gibran’s Victory

The victory of the President-elect and Vice President-elect, Prabowo Subianto—Gibran Rakabuming Raka, in the 2024 presidential election was nothing short of astonishing. Prabowo-Gibran clinched over their rivals only in a round with 58.59% of the votes.

 

One prominent factor attributed to this remarkable win is the instrumentalization of state high departments. This article delves into what makes instrumentalizing state departments seemingly more feasible in Indonesia. I argue that two major factors contribute to this: the president’s authority in appointing the head and members of state high departments and the persistence of neopatrimonialism.

 

The President’s Privilege

 

One key feature of sophisticated authoritarianism is manipulating the democratic state’s infrastructure to maintain power. This manipulation extends beyond flawed elections to strategically placing close allies in key public positions. Notable examples of this practice include the Donald Trump administration in the United States and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela (Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018). 

 

This undemocratic strategy is more common in Southeast Asia (Morgenbesser, 2020; Curato & Fossati, 2020), such as Thailand (Kongkirati, 2019) and Cambodia (Morgenbesser, 2016, 2019; Loughlin, 2022, and Noren-Nilson, 2021). In Indonesia, it is massively exploited under Jokowi’s regime since the president has the constitutional privilege to appoint the chief and members of state departments involved in arranging the election. 

 

In reference to Law Number 15/2011 (Article 12-16), the member of the Election Commission is selected by a team established by the President. This team chooses 14 candidates to propose to the President. The President forwards these candidates to the House of Representatives to elect seven candidates, who the President later inaugurates. The same law (Article 86-90) mirrors the Election Commission’s selection process for the Election Supervisory Board.

 

Law Number 34/2004 (Article 13, Section 2, 5) stipulates that the Indonesian National Armed Forces are led by a chief commander who is “appointed and dismissed by the President after obtaining approval from the House of Representatives.” The mechanism of promoting the head of the Indonesian National Police has a very similar structure (Law Number 2/2002, Article 8, Section 2).

 

The Supreme Constitutional Court has nine members; each three are nominated by the Supreme Court, the House of Representatives, and the President (Law Number 24/2003, Article 18, Section 1). Since the President has an enormous coalition in the House of Representatives, he can influence three elected judges proposed by the legislature, thus having six people on the court. 

 

These departments are strictly mandated by the law to be impartial. However, the legal framework, which gives the president the authority to select, propose, and inaugurate, allows him to put his men in these strategic seats. Exploiting such legal restrictions is common in many contemporary states and primordial societies (North, 1990, 1991; Voight, 2013, 2019).

 

Additionally, in a process that requires the parliament’s involvement, the legislature seems to play a rubber-stump role as the president has a big coalition in the parliament. The president’s privilege to budget and legislation enhances Jokowi’s chances of controlling these departments.

 

Neopatrimonialism

 

The potential for instrumentalizing the state’s high departments is exacerbated by the prevalence of neopatrimonialism under the Jokowi administration. The officers do not distinguish the office from its holder (Bach, 2011). They are deeply indebted to the president as a person, not as an institution, who grants them the seats. Therefore, they will do whatever they can to assist Jokowi’s interests. 

 

Neopatrimonialism is characterized by three main features: concentration of power, systematic clientelism, and particularistic use of state resources (Bratton and van de Walle, 1997). Power concentration is best articulated in presidentialism. As Indonesia’s political and bureaucratic structure embraces presidentialism, most strategic decisions are in the hands of the president. 

 

The wide range of power leads to democratic backslide or authoritarianism (McAfee, 2023). The role of legislature and judicature as the requisite to balance executive power is trivial. This is expressed in Jokowi’s overweight coalition in the parliament. He also has the majority support in the Constitutional Supreme Court. 

 

Systematic clientelism can be observed in Jokowi’s decisions to put his men in strategic positions in state departments and embrace more parties he considers to have the potential to help him keep his office and other hidden agendas. The head of the Constitutional Supreme Court, Anwar Usman, is his sister’s husband. The current head of the Policy, Listyo Sigit Prabowo, and the chief commander of the Indonesian Armed Forces, Agus Subianto, were part of Jokowi’s gang when they were assigned as the local commander of the police and the military in Surakarta.

 

Jokowi even extended his circle by building a big coalition that does not only comprise political parties in the parliament, as implied by the traditional sense of democratic coalition, but all non-political vehicles, such as the major religious and civil society organizations (Nahdlatul Ulama, Muhammadiyah), and even the Corruption Eradication Commission (Mietzner, 2023). The election committee is not excluded from this circle because it plays a crucial role in establishing the race winner.

 

In the 2024 election, Jokowi instrumentalized the state departments to secure Prabowo-Gibran’s victory (Scott, 2024), as he did in his first term and second race (Power, 2018; Warburton and Aspinall, 2019). To continue his developmentalist view and political-economic interest, he explicitly endorsed Prabowo-Gibran, although he still belonged to the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP). 

 

Jokowi weaponized particularistic state resources in his “Sembako” (groceries) program. Despite how beneficial it was for the people, providing people with “Sembako” close to the election date was a by-design populistic program to capture voters. As Indonesians have a strong sense of reciprocity, they would vote for the president’s preferred candidate to pay him back. 

 

The president’s legal privilege to elect the officers and the persistence of neopatrimonialism enabled Jokowi to instrumentalize the state high departments to secure Prabowo-Gibran’s victory in the 2024 presidential election. To prevent this sophisticated authoritarian strategy from being used in the upcoming local elections, all political parties and ordinary citizens need to ensure the impartiality of officials in state high departments.