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A dozen masked commandos crouch inside a jet-black navy dinghy because it carves throughout shimmering Jakarta Bay. At the bow, loops of 12.7mm bullets spill from a tri-barreled gatling gun; on the stern, Prabowo Subianto, Indonesia’s Defense Minister and President-elect, appraises the fishing boats and rusting refueling stations that pepper the inky water. It’s a scene acquainted to Prabowo from his time main the nation’s particular forces—though right now’s mission targets not AK47-totting rebels, however stench and squalor.
As the dinghy docks at Muara Angke, a slum perched on the northern shore of Indonesia’s sprawling capital, Prabowo, 72, clambers onto land and plunges right into a cheering crowd, shaking palms and kissing infants. In his wake, aides go out plastic trinkets from trash baggage to barefooted youngsters. One mom carries ahead her younger son, who’s blinded by simply treatable cataracts. Prabowo listens to her tearful pleas and instructs a secretary to take them straight to a health care provider; the identical for an outdated lady with a tumor sprouting out of 1 nostril.
“There are officers in uniform in all places so why haven’t they already helped them?!” Prabowo spits bitterly as we battle via the melee.
It looks like a marketing campaign cease, however Prabowo isn’t campaigning: he already gained Indonesia’s highest workplace with over 58% of the vote in February elections and shall be inaugurated on Oct. 20. That landslide noticed over 96 million votes solid for the previous basic—probably the most ever for a single candidate anyplace in recorded historical past. It was two weeks earlier than polling day that Prabowo final stopped by Muara Angke to be “heartbroken,” he says, by its pauperized inhabitants wallowing waist-deep in floodwater full of human excrement and discarded mussel shells. (Harvesting the seafood is the primary native business.)
Prabowo instantly ordered the National Defense University to assemble 200 new low-cost floating and stilted homes fitted with photo voltaic panels, indoor bogs, and filtered consuming water. Those ubiquitous mussel shells had been gathered from the gutter and floor into low-cost bricks and paving slabs; a blight turned to properties. This return journey in August was merely to kick the tires, examine that each one was shipshape like an officer on parade, although the deafening three-syllable chants of “Pra-bo-wo!” telegraphed the native response even earlier than he had stepped onto the dock.
“It’s heartwarming,” Prabowo tells TIME of his reception throughout over six hours of interviews, his first with Western media since his election victory. “But it’s additionally unhappy. The approach these individuals lived. And there’s nonetheless a lot work to do.”
If Prabowo’s success dragging Muara Angke out of the mire is spectacular, he faces a stiffer problem to uplift all of Indonesia’s 280 million individuals. The archipelago nation of greater than 17,000 islands is Southeast Asia’s greatest economic system and has made nice strides below the earlier two phrases of outgoing President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who nonetheless enjoys a outstanding 77% approval score, however should step down because of time period limits. Jokowi boosted well being and schooling companies for poorer Indonesians and launched grand infrastructure initiatives together with toll roads, seaports, and airports. He slashed tape hampering international funding and championed a “downstream” coverage to retain the fruits of Indonesia’s bountiful assets domestically.
Having remodeled from a fierce rival to champion of Jokowi, Prabowo was billed because the continuity candidate, although he has daring concepts of his personal. In distinction to his predecessor’s grandiose plans to host marquee occasions like Formula 1 racing or the Olympics, Prabowo prioritizes direct motion that instantly improves lives. He is rolling out a $30 billion plan to supply free meals in faculties; intends to battle endemic corruption by elevating civil service salaries and utilizing know-how akin to AI; and plans to make the most of new farming methods to show the world’s fourth-most populous nation right into a meals exporter inside 5 years. Poverty, in the meantime, he plans to eradicate in two. “Almighty God and the individuals of Indonesia gave me the mandate,” he says. “I all the time say we’d like energy, however to do good with that energy.”
Yet Prabowo is a controversial determine, to place it mildly. He was one of the vital feared generals below reviled dictator Suharto—to not point out the strongman’s son-in-law. Serious human-rights accusations meant he was banned from visiting the U.S. till his appointment as protection minister in 2019. He unsuccessfully ran for president twice earlier than with divisive campaigns that openly courted the Islamic proper. He lastly triumphed by reinventing himself as a gemoy, or cute and cuddly, grandpa, whose trademark dancing on the stump garnered many hundreds of thousands of views on social media amongst youthful voters unburdened by historic baggage. Yet activists worry Prabowo’s rise will herald an erosion of democracy and emboldening of a navy already accused of significant abuses in restive minority areas.
As Southeast Asia’s largest nation and high economic system, Indonesia has all the time been the lynchpin of its strategically very important area. But with over 1 / 4 of the world’s provide of minerals, it has additionally emerged as a battleground between the U.S. and China for the copper, gold, and nickel important for the inexperienced transition and any tech economic system. Neither has a lock. Regular Chinese intrusions into Indonesia’s territorial waters stoke public outrage, whereas Washington’s help for Israel within the Gaza disaster has proved poisonous in a nation with extra Muslims than another.
Prabowo nods in all instructions. His first international journey after his election victory was to satisfy Chinese President Xi Jinping. In July, he additionally met Vladimir Putin in Moscow, describing Russia as a “nice good friend.” At the stump, Prabowo railed in opposition to Western “double requirements” and insisted “we don’t actually need Europe anymore” in response to E.U. import restrictions.
“We respect all nice powers,” Prabowo tells TIME. “China is a superb civilization. And the United States is a superb energy [but] typically makes errors. They forgot who their true associates are. Some components of the U.S. administration, at a sure level, have an opinion about me. But I all the time put the pursuits of my individuals first.”
He might have spent 20 years within the political wilderness, however Prabowo has been getting ready for this his total life. In distinction with Jokowi, a former carpenter raised in a shanty and Indonesia’s first chief with out navy or political connections, Prabowo may be very a lot of elite inventory. His grandfather based Indonesia’s central financial institution, whereas his father served as minister for the economic system below first President Sukarno. But his father was compelled into exile for becoming a member of a failed insurrection, so Prabowo spent his childhood in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and England.
Upon returning to Indonesia, Prabowo joined its military particular forces unit, Kopassus, later receiving coaching within the U.S. Army’s Fort Bragg and Fort Benning. His marriage to one in all Suharto’s daughters stored him near energy as he climbed the navy ziggurat. But after Suharto was toppled in 1998, Prabowo was discharged from the armed forces for alleged human rights violations regarding the detention of democracy activists and he went into exile in Jordan.
Shunned by the navy elite that made him, Prabowo joined his youthful brother Hashim’s mining and agribusiness empire. After a quiet return to Indonesia, he set about consolidating his place within the nation’s new democratic politics. After two failed presidential bids in 2014 and 2019, Prabowo lastly triumphed, thanks partially to backing from the favored Jokowi.
It wasn’t a pure union. The two had been fierce rivals and Prabowo’s 2019 presidential run ended with hundreds of supporters converging on Jakarta to protest what they claimed was a stolen poll. (The outcomes tallied with pre-elections polls and impartial displays discovered no malfeasance.) Eight individuals had been killed and greater than 600 injured as protesters armed with rocks and fireworks torched vehicles and battled police. Prabowo says he had an epiphany when inspecting dozens of supporters nursing wounds and sputtering from caustic tear fuel.
“This younger boy, not more than 17 or 18, checked out me and mentioned, ‘Prabowo, we’re able to die for you!’” he recollects. “I dropped to the aspect, shook him and mentioned, ‘No, I do not need you to die for me. You should stay to your mother and father and for Indonesia.’ And then I simply instructed myself, I’m not going to have these younger youngsters die for me. I do not need that.”
It was a climbdown that in the end sparked his ascent. After Prabowo ordered his followers dwelling, Jokowi despatched an emissary to hunt talks. The two adversaries unexpectedly bonded and Jokowi invited Prabowo into his administration. Although initially reluctant, Prabowo discovered the provide of main his beloved armed forces unimaginable to show down. “Jokowi is a really first rate man,” says Prabowo, including with a smile: “And I want to think about myself considerably first rate additionally!”
This softening belied Prabowo’s formidable status as a battle-hardened Kopassus commando, when the tradition, as he places it, was “kill or be killed.” But Prabowo is simply too advanced a personality to be distilled as merely the “bloodbath basic,” as he sums up his Western status with a resigned eyeroll. Along with the native Bahasa and Betawi dialects, he speaks fluent English, French, and German. Over grilled ribeye and octopus salad at his favourite Italian restaurant in Jakarta, he’s gregarious firm, musing at size in regards to the significance of cartographers within the Napoleonic wars, controversial hyperlinks between race and intelligence within the 1994 treatise The Bell Curve, and the function of non secular sectarianism within the European renaissance. He’s at present devouring a biography of Catherine de’ Medici. “I’m an avid scholar of historical past,” he says.
Extremely well being aware, he rises at 6 a.m. to swim earlier than starting his day, listening to rock, classical, or navy music on underwater headphones as aides linger close by to notice down any concepts that spring between lengths. He detests smoking, which might be problematic in a nation the place nearly three-quarters of the male inhabitants lights up, and has even scolded international dignitaries who indulge within the behavior. (Smokers on Prabowo’s group are always attempting to duck out for a fast puff with out being seen.) And he’s obsessed by schooling and IQ, reeling off the supposed intelligence scores of historic figures.
“Einstein was 200; Napoleon was 180,” he estimates. “I’m simply 105, I’m not that good, however I like to make use of good individuals. I’ve a whole lot of 130, 140 individuals working for me.”
Once a part of Jokowi’s group, Prabowo proved a diligent and dependable colleague, abjuring any alternative to undermine his former foe. When the 2024 election got here round, Jokowi shunned the candidacy of his personal party colleague to as an alternative again Prabowo, who agreed to run alongside Jokowi’s eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, who will now function vice-president.
Yet many Indonesians are perturbed by Jokowi’s brazen makes an attempt to retain affect from behind the scenes. A failed try to vary election guidelines to permit his youngest son to run for the deputy governor publish of Central Java introduced hundreds onto the road, with demonstrators in Jakarta even attempting to interrupt down the gates of parliament. Jokowi has additionally put in loyalists in key posts within the police, judiciary, and defanged the nation’s anti-corruption fee.
Prabowo has no dynastic ambitions—his solely son is an award-winning Paris clothier—and he scoffs at the concept Jokowi’s maneuverings portend battle forward. “The majority of the Indonesian individuals need continuity,” Prabowo says. “The incontrovertible fact that [Gibran] is with me strengthens that bond.”
Prabowo might not be orchestrating the shredding of democratic norms, however he’s a major beneficiary, and liberals worry what he’ll do with the extra centralized energy construction that Jokowi is bequeathing him. Others imagine his household’s internet of enterprise pursuits will provide alternatives for graft and favor. “Prabowo’s origins on the very middle of the outdated New Order of Suharto, which was very corrupt and run by predatory enterprise and political alliances, means that he is definitely used to these types of preparations,” says Vedi Hadiz, professor of Asian research on the University of Melbourne. (Prabowo counters that preventing corruption is on the very high of his agenda.)
Yet his predecessor’s obsession with legacy is problematic—not least Jokowi’s signature scheme of Nusantara, Indonesia’s new capital hewed out of 400,000 hectares of the Borneo rainforest, full with ostentatious eagle-shaped presidential palace. While 12,000 civil servants had been scheduled to maneuver in by September, solely a fraction of their lodgings have been constructed. Prabowo has vowed to proceed the undertaking, highlighting how transferring the capital from choked, sinking Jakarta has been mooted by numerous presidents from Sukarno and was even a part of his personal 2014 election platform. “It’s a really noble ultimate,” he says, “and proper for the nationwide integration of our individuals.”
But at $30 billion, it’s an costly gambit, particularly as Nusantara has additionally confirmed a tough promote to But the undertaking has solely obtained about $3.5 billion of the $6.4 billion investments anticipated by the tip of 2024—all from native corporations and state-owned establishments. That modified final month when a Chinese property agency Delonix Group broke floor on a $33 million advanced of lodges and workplaces in Nusantara. “This will convey confidence in different buyers to enter the brand new capital,” Jokowi mentioned on the ceremony.
The worry amongst Western diplomatic circles is that Nusantara will increase Indonesia’s susceptibility to affect from China, which is already engaged in a number of transformative infrastructure initiatives, notably the flagship Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway. However, wooing the superpower more and more entails its personal prices. Under Jokowi, Indonesia banned the exports of uncooked nickel ore—a key part of EV batteries—in 2020 to pursue a “downstream” coverage of processing uncooked supplies domestically to retain extra of the value-add, with Prabowo insisting he’s “fully on the identical web page.” But the truth that over 90% of Indonesia’s nickel smelters are constructed by Chinese corporations has led to friction with the U.S.
Last October, 9 U.S. senators wrote a letter urging the Biden administration to reject a possible free commerce settlement with Indonesia because of “weak labor protections, Chinese dominance of Indonesian mining and refining, vital biodiversity impacts” amongst different considerations. Already, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act stipulates that electrical autos containing China-sourced batteries and metallic elements usually are not eligible for $7,500 tax rebates. Such geopolitical impediments are already pushing Jakarta to diversify its investor pool for extractive industries.
For Prabowo, the precedence is to seem “a part of the American geopolitical neighborhood however economically to court docket China,” says Hadiz. “Like Jokowi, he’ll need Chinese funding into infrastructure and the capital metropolis undertaking.”
Prabowo insists his aim is to maintain Indonesia non-aligned, even when geopolitics renders this tightrope ever narrower.
“We have the historical past of all the time being impartial,” he says. “When an Indonesian chief leaves this custom, he brings us into catastrophe. So we respect the Americans, we wish extra American participation right here, however we additionally respect China.”
It was not all the time that approach, after all, with Prabowo’s navy profession targeted on countering leftist threats fostered by Beijing. Like many navy males, Prabowo is hesitant to debate his previous campaigns. “Don’t ask an outdated soldier to inform warfare tales,” he demurs. “They’ll maintain speaking and speaking.” But over lunch within the Defense Ministry he finally acquiesces.
Soon emerge tales of Prabowo turning into stranded in a minefield, one comrade’s severed leg flying previous his face; a suicide pact with one other when cornered below heavy hearth; and impersonating the noise of a buffalo to contact partisans deep within the Timorese jungle, solely to be confronted by the true factor.
While Prabowo insists he “served with honor” all through his navy profession, accusations canine his numerous deployments. During his excursions of Timor-Leste, the place some 180,000 Timorese perished through the 1975-1999 Indonesian occupation, he stands accused of overseeing the 1983 bloodbath of some 200 individuals in Kraras, right now dubbed the “city of widows.” In Timor-Leste’s 2005 Chega! Truth and Reconciliation Report, Prabowo’s title seems 19 occasions. “Prabowo needs to be in jail,” says Naldo Rei, a former little one soldier for the Timorese resistance who was repeatedly imprisoned and tortured by the Indonesian navy. “Not only for Timor-Leste but in addition inside Indonesia. Many individuals are hungry for justice.”
In August 1998, simply months after the autumn of Suharto’s regime, Prabowo was discharged from the navy for his alleged function abducting not less than 23 activists; one was discovered killed, 9 had been returned, and 13 others stay formally lacking. Although Prabowo was by no means formally charged with any crime, a 2005 investigation by Indonesia’s National Human Rights Commission concluded that duty lay with the Kopassus unit below direct orders of its then commander: Prabowo.
Prabowo denies all allegations. “I’ve by no means induced any human rights abuses,” he says. “My conscience is evident.” He additionally factors out how some former democracy activists detained below the Suharto regime are actually his supporters, akin to one named Budiman Soedjatmiko, whom Prabowo not totally reassuringly instructed throughout a marketing campaign occasion: “Sorry man, I used to chase you. But I’ve already apologized, proper?”
While requires accountability won’t ever disappear, there may be an appreciation throughout the area that the demise of dictatorship and beginning of democracy contain occasions that almost all can, if not forgive, not less than settle for. “We are all very joyful that Prabowo is the president,” Timor-Leste President Jose Ramos-Horta tells TIME in Dili. “Ironically, Indonesian individuals who served in Timor, civilian or navy, have extra attachment and care extra about Timor-Leste than these with zero involvement. With Prabowo, we might improve our relationship.”
The staunch backing of Ramos-Horta, who gained the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize for advocating for Timor-Leste self-determination, signifies historic baggage gained’t rely in opposition to Prabowo within the worldwide enviornment. There’s little doubt the cosmopolitan Prabowo shall be extra at dwelling on the earth than Jokowi, who tended to shun worldwide fora just like the U.N. General Assembly. In June final yr, Prabowo even offered a peace plan for Ukraine on the Shangri-la Dialogue, calling for a demilitarized zone and a U.N. referendum.
The query is whether or not Prabowo will lastly rouse this sleeping large from its slumber. “People all the time need Indonesia to be extra lively,” Prabowo says, “however we’ve to deal with our individuals first.”
At Prabowo’s ranch within the hills south of Jakarta, 400 younger males in crewcuts and oil inexperienced uniforms fidget in an amphitheater because the Dutch warfare epic The East performs overhead. Suddenly, the display turns white and Prabowo strolls on stage, prompting all to face and launch into a standard Javanese warfare dance, punching the air, thumping chests, and chanting in hypnotic unison. The show ends and Prabowo strolls the ranks of recruits, asking their dwelling province, their college main, and razzing a few the stoutest about their paunch.
These are latest college graduates from throughout Indonesia recruited for Prabowo’s flagship undertaking, dubbed Graduates for Development. The plan is to finally recruit 50,000 good younger Indonesians—minimal IQ 110—into this particular civil service program, instill them with navy self-discipline and patriotic zeal, and dispatch them to far-flung provinces to information improvement initiatives. Much like his success constructing homes in Muara Angke, Prabowo desires to sidestep Indonesia’s Kafkaesque paperwork with direct motion.
First obligation, he says, would be the free faculty meals roll-out, after which they are going to be entrusted to show farmers new sustainable agricultural methods, after which assist small companies develop via utilized know-how. Prabowo says he “borrowed” the idea from John F. Kennedy’s Peace Corps and his “greatest and brightest” philosophy. “I’m a person of motion,” Prabowo says later that night over dinner in his ranch library, as he quietly passes scraps of meat to 2 of his favourite canine, Kiki and Romeo, ensconced by his toes. “I can not see struggling, poverty, and injustice and never do something.”
Following 10 years of the “son of the slums” Jokowi, Prabowo represents a return to energy for the nation’s aristocracy, although right now’s knowledgeable, refined Indonesians gained’t be glad with scraps from his desk. Prabowo is aware of his controversial background means judgement shall be faster and extra withering. But after so a few years within the wilderness, he’s decided to not waste time. “The success of society rests on the wellbeing of your individuals,” he says, eyes all of the sudden narrowing: “You are both with me or you will get out of the best way.”
—With reporting by Koh Ewe/Singapore and Leslie Dickstein/New York
