Indonesia’s election year: looking back

Indonesia’s election year – with legislative and presidential elections held on 14 February 2024, and regional head elections on 28 November 2024 – was a critical test case for Indonesia’s democracy, and according to many the outcome did not bode well. Some 26 years after the end of authoritarian New Order rule, this election year marked the triumphant consolidation of power of an oligarchic elite that is poised to pursue its interests by hijacking democratic institutions, stretching their capacity to perform checks and balances to the limit. Observers had warned for an illiberal turn in Indonesia’s democracy since 2017, a trend seen to deepen after the 2019 elections that gave rise to a new strategic alliance between former rivals Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo and Prabowo Subianto. Now, after Prabowo’s Jokowi-backed electoral victory, activists sound the alarm over a ‘worst-case scenario’ for Indonesia’s democracy. But ruling elites claim that critics should stop whining, as they were legitimately elected through the democratic vote.

In this edition of Inside Indonesia we look back on Indonesia’s election year to see what lessons can be drawn about the current state of Indonesia’s democracy. We ask what the ‘democratic vote’ still means in a context of entrenched political clientelism and transactionalism, deepening dynastic politics and ever more sophisticated influence operations. We do so by zooming in on the role of dynastic politics and that of manipulative campaigns masked as positive branding behind Prabowo’s victory, the role of social media in creating hyperrealities and parallel worlds that shaped voters’ perceptions, and the consequences of national election outcomes on the regional elections held later that year.