Indonesia’s recent election offered ominous prospects for the country’s civil society. Electoral authorities are still finalising the official count of the votes from an electorate of over 200 million, cast across the vast and scattered country, but preliminary results all point to Prabowo Subianto becoming the next president. The former general, forced out of the army for human rights violations, is likely about to take the helm of the one of the world’s biggest democracies.

Unlevel playing field

Prabowo will take over from President Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi, who couldn’t stand again after serving two terms. But he still loomed large in the election. While Jokowi didn’t formally endorse anyone, it was clear he backed Prabowo, a former political enemy who became his defence minister – and whose running mate for vice president was none other than Jokowi’s son, Gibran Rakabuming.

Aged just 36, Gibran was ineligible to stand, since he’s short of the minimum age of 40 the law requires. But the Constitutional Court, conveniently headed by Jokowi’s brother-in-law, ruled that elected regional officials under 40 were eligible – a decision tailor-made for Gibran, mayor of the city of Surakarta. It all looks like a political dynasty in the making.

The court decision was one of many indications of a deeply unequal competition. Even though Jokowi’s party had its own contender, Ganjar Pranowo, it was Prabowo who campaigned as Jokowi’s continuity candidate, and from the president down, government officials used state resources to back him. The government stepped up its social spending ahead of the vote. Ministers hit the campaign trail to support Prabowo. When they made official visits, they handed out gifts of food, crediting Jokowi with the largesse and reminding voters of the importance of continuity.

Ahead of the vote, the government created new provinces in a region where Prabowo had much support. It filled vacancies for regional officials with its supporters, increasing its control over the electoral process.

Many of these actions breached the Election Law, but electoral authorities seemed unwilling to hold those responsible to account. When people spoke out about these practices, government officials vilified them as agents of foreign interests. Some critics had their phones and social media accounts hacked. Police reportedly also pressured academics and student groups to make positive statements about Jokowi, and at least one student discussion on the election was forced to halt when a group of unidentified assailants stormed it. Human rights groups reported facing intimidation in the run-up to voting.

All these manoeuvres can only have boosted Prabowo, who preliminary results suggest has taken more than half of the vote, avoiding a runoff.

Rights abuser turns cuddly grandpa

The situation that’s unfolded has some similarities with the Philippines’ 2022 election, which offered the same mix of family ties and connections to the dictatorship era. There, the son of a former dictator became president and the daughter of the outgoing leader became vice president. As in Indonesia, some voters were motivated by a desire for continuity. And also like in Indonesia, there was among some voters a sense of reappraisal, or at least forgetfulness, towards the former dictatorship.

In the Philippines, the winners spread blatant disinformation to repackage an authoritarian dictatorship, overthrown in the 1986 People Power Revolution, as a golden era to people too young to have lived through it. In Indonesia, military dictator Suharto ruled with an iron fist from 1967 until mass protests forced him out in 1998. His was a particularly corrupt and brutal regime, said to be responsible for over half a million killings of opponents. Many of these were at the hands of a special army unit, Kopassus, in which Prabowo served as a commander. He also married one of Suharto’s daughters, cementing his place in the dictator’s inner circle.

Following Suharto’s downfall, Prabowo was discharged from the army after admitting responsibility for kidnapping activists, 13 of whom have never been found. The unit he led is accused of a string of killings, enforced disappearances and torture, including in Timor-Leste, then under Indonesia’s control. Due to his human rights record, he was barred from entering the USA for two decades.

But in a spectacular act of rebranding that involved extensive use of an AI-generated chubby character doing dances on social media, replicated by Prabowo at campaign rallies, the 72-year-former general transformed himself into a ‘cuddly grandpa’. Half of Indonesia’s voters are under 40, many born after the fall of Suharto, and they seized on the image, making Prabowo an instant TikTok sensation, creating and spreading memes about him. Some 167 million Indonesians are active on social media, giving Prabowo incredible reach, and he easily outspent his opponents in Facebook advertising. His image gave people something new amid normally staid politics, cutting through in a campaign where policy debate was notable by its absence.

More of the same?

For civil society, the promise of continuity is troubling. Jokowi’s popularity rested on his economic success, growing the economy with a string of large-scale infrastructure developments, some with China’s backing. But human rights suffered.

The state clearly signalled its priorities in passing a wide-ranging legislative package in 2020, styled as the Jobs Creation Law, that weakened labour rights and environmental protections. The law was subsequently delayed by the Supreme Court due to lack of consultation, but the government retained most of its measures in an emergency decree that replaced it in 2023.

The law was passed in the face of mass protests, which the state repressed with violence and mass arrests. It unleashed a similarly heavy-handed response to protests against fuel price rises in 2022.

Under Jokowi’s watch the state has harassed, threatened and criminalised activists and journalists, including by making extensive use of the Electronic Information and Transaction Law to repress online dissent. It’s also targeted journalists for exposing wrongdoing, including by deporting foreign reporters. The authorities have particularly targeted activists in the Papua region, home to an independence movement, where they have also imposed internet shutdowns. They have used treason charges against political activists.

In 2022 the government revised the criminal code, extending its powers to further restrict protest and expanding criminal defamation and blasphemy offences, alongside measures to effectively criminalise same-sex relations and tighten anti-abortion laws.

The fact that so many rules were ignored or bent during the campaign – including to enable Gibran to stand – doesn’t augur well for the future of the rule of law in Indonesia. But Prabowo has denied they are any problems with Indonesia’s democracy and has already shown hostility towards journalists. He’s the only candidate to refuse to attend a press freedom event or complete a Human Rights Watch questionnaire.

How might Prabowo respond when the ‘cuddly grandpa’ image fades and civil society tries to hold his government to account? Once he’s taken office in October, one way Prabowo could prove the doubters wrong is by committing to respecting civic space and working with civil society.