In Indonesia, Prabowo’s first 100 days in power have been full of surprises

As political surprises go, the decision by Indonesia’s president, Prabowo Subianto, late last year to free the remaining Bali Nine drug smugglers “by Christmas” was a huge one.

Despite no prisoner swap laws existing to make it happen, the new leader nonetheless pulled it off.

But it’s hardly the only surprise in an action-packed first 100 days for South-East Asia’s most consequential president.

In a break with Indonesia’s traditional aversion to bloc politics, he signed the country up to BRICS — the China-led grouping seen as a counterweight to Western-led organisations.

In a confrontation with the world’s biggest tech company, he escalated a battle with Apple over selling its latest iPhone in Indonesia.

And in a planned move, he started the roll out of the country’s most ambitious program under which more than 80 million free meals will be served each day to try to end malnutrition stunting.

“Prabowo is much more complex, he’s not a one-dimensional man,” said Dewi Fortuna Anwar, a former government advisor.

“He’s very much a realist … he believes countries have to be strong, the people have to be strong,” she said.

Mr Subianto is more commonly referred to by his first name Prabowo, and his race to get things done is hardly surprising.

He spent almost 20 years running for president before finally winning the vote last year.

He’s had a while to think about what he’ll do.

But the pace of change has taken even seasoned observers by surprise, who say the former military general is keen to show the world he’s very much his own man.

It’s all the more important after he broke bread with his old rival and predecessor Joko Widodo, commonly known as Jokowi, and cruised into the presidency on the coat-tails of the outgoing leader’s popularity.

Promising continuity and choosing Mr Widodo’s son as his running mate, Prabowo is now out to counter the lingering influence of the former president.

“As the president, Prabowo needs a clear position that he’s independent, and that even if he agrees with a position of Jokowi, he will try a different approach,” said Aditya Perdana, an associate professor at the University of Indonesia.

Clearing prison backlog could mean softer drug laws

The release of the remaining Bali Nine inmates in December wasn’t just a diplomatic nicety to Australia.

Prabowo says he wants to reduce prison overcrowding.

He has pushed the idea of sending people convicted of drug possession to rehabilitation centres instead of jails.

In what would be another big move, his top law minister says the administration is pondering repatriating the alleged mastermind of the 2002 Bali bombings, Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, from the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay.

Hambali’s prosecution has been plagued by delays and a reluctance by successive Indonesian governments to seek his return, with prosecution in a US military court seen as easier.

But the Americans are keen to close the war-on-terror-era prison, and Prabowo’s government is looking at another potential diplomatic deal to fix an outstanding problem.

Such a move might be controversial, as most victims of the terror attacks in the early 2000s were Indonesians, despite the targets normally being bars and hotels where Westerners gathered.

But like with his move to “transfer” drug traffickers home early, there’s little public backlash to the idea of Hambali’s return.

The respected media group Kompass this week found Prabowo enjoyed an 81 per cent approval rating after his first three months in the job.

BRICS move not about siding with China

In December, Prabowo’s government announced Indonesia was becoming a full member of BRICS, a 16-year-old organisation started by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

The grouping is largely led and influenced by China, and some commentators assumed Indonesia’s entry was a sign of taking sides.

But Prabowo and his ministers have repeated a foreign policy stance that “1,000 friends are too few, one enemy is too many”.

And government members have stressed it’s about Indonesia raising its voice in as many global forums as possible.

Some analysts say the expansion of the grouping to include countries such as Ethiopia, Egypt and the UAE has softened the perception that it’s a Chinese-Russian initiative to contest Western influence, making it diplomatically easier for Jakarta to sign up.

“BRICS is one of many [groups] that Indonesia is seeking to join,” said Ms Anwar, noting that Indonesia is also bidding to become a member of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

China, though, was the first country Prabowo visited last year, as a rather long detour on the way to a regional summit in Peru.

But in a sign of his wish to balance the major powers, he then flew to Washington to meet then-president Joe Biden.

“We are going to see a much higher-profile Indonesian foreign policy, it’s a real contrast to the Jokowi period,” said Ms Anwar.

Can he really keep feeding the nation’s children?

The most high profile domestic move in the opening months has been the rollout of a free lunch program for school students and pregnant mothers.

Even though only a fraction of the 83 million people who are supposed to receive the daily nutritional supplement have so far benefited from the program, it has been extremely popular.

But it also shows the limits of what Prabowo can do.

Having budgeted each meal to cost $1.50, the government has had to scale it down to $1.

Just this year alone, the plan is adding $7 billion of new spending to the nation’s budget, and that’s scheduled to rise to about $40 billion a year as the program expands.

Making matters worse, a last minute New Year’s Eve intervention by Prabowo to pair back a planned GST-style tax increase has stripped about $7 billion of annual revenue from the budget.

It was a popular but costly move.

Some public policy analysts say the country simply can’t afford the free meals program.

“There is no new revenue coming in, and the [$40 billion] budgeted won’t be enough,” said Brima Yudhistira Adhinegara, an analyst from the Centre of Economic and Law Studies in Jakarta.

Saving the palm oil trees

If there’s one area of diplomacy where Prabowo doesn’t mind picking a fight, it’s with Europe over palm oil.

Indonesia and Malaysia are the world’s two biggest palm oil exporters, and they’ve long been at loggerheads with the European Union over regulations designed to monitor and restrict native forest land clearing in their countries.

As a major importer of palm oil, the EU has heft, but on the campaign trail Prabowo thundered about economic nationalism and foreigners seeking to get their hands on Indonesia’s resources.

So it’s little surprise as president he’s now calling for a massive expansion of palm oil plantations, bemoaning the negative perception of them and arguing that “palm trees are trees”.

“We therefore should massively expand our oil palm plantations, and I hereby order provincial governors, regents and all law enforcement agencies to protect existing oil palm estates. They are the nation’s assets,” he said earlier this month.

Not shy to make big plans, Prabowo has also championed energy efficiency, pledging to end imports of oil within five years, and have the economy expand by an annual rate of 8 per cent for gross domestic product.

Both are viewed as long shots.

“The 8 per cent target is an illusion, it’s more like a political promise,” said Brima Yudhistira Adhinegara.

Fixing corruption might be the hardest challenge of all

But of all the problems for an Indonesian leader to address, fixing endemic levels of corruption is one of the biggest.

And on this front, Prabowo has already faced heat for suggesting an amnesty for officials, politicians and businesspeople who have plundered money from the government.

“Hey you corrupters, or those who feel that you have stolen from the people, if you return what you stole, we might forgive you. But please return it,” he said in a speech in December.

The backlash was swift, and it wasn’t long before he was suggesting 50-year jail terms instead for people accused of stealing from the state.

Early signs aren’t promising though.

The country’s Anti-corruption commission has been investigating senior figures in the PDI-P, the main opposition party outside of Prabowo’s parliamentary super-coalition.

Critics say it shows politicisation of the supposedly independent body, rather than a genuine effort to stamp out corruption.

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