The real Prabowo is roaring


Prabowo has the opportunity to take a stand that will probably change the course of his presidency and demonstrate the true leader that he is. — Filepic/Reuters

HE is nearing 100 days in office. Prabowo Subianto, Indonesia’s eighth president, has been struggling to posit his own mark as the leader of the third biggest democracy in the world. More importantly he has yet to free himself from being disastrously indebted to the former president, Joko Widodo.

— Reuters— Reuters

Despite having completed his two terms, Jokowi is not likely to ride into the sunset basking in the glory of being the president with the highest approval ratings among democratically elected leaders anywhere in the world. Jokowi simply refuses to fade away.

He has his son Gibran Rakabuming Raka as Prabowo’s deputy, thanks to his manoeuvring to change the law to allow a 36-year-old to contest for the second highest office in the land. His cawe-cawe is the hallmark of his personality. He has his hands (dirty, said many) in the recent regional elections and the appointment of key personnel even days before his time was over.

But his inclusion as one of the five most corrupt leaders in the list of the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) must have rattled Jokowi.

Probowo has been silent on the subject, a smart move on his part. Since taking office, Prabowo has not been seriously addressing the issue of the contentious new capital, Nusantara, Jokowi’s grand project. Prabowo is more concerned about providing free food for children and the poor.

Will Probowo prove to his people that he is not a shadow of Jokowi or a proxy for him? Even termakan budi (indebtedness) can’t last forever. Now he has the opportunity to take a stand that will probably change the course of his presidency and demonstrates the true leader that he is.

It started with the bamboos.

Yes, the mysterious bamboo fences off the coast of Tangerang in the Banten Regency of Java.

For the last eight months there have been frantic activity erecting fences that are made up of woven bamboo poles with sandbag weights, and in certain areas, even a foot path constructed atop the structure. It stretches along 30.1km covering six subdistricts (kecamatan).

Apparently no one seemed to bother – regional officers, the police, even local headmen – about what was happening. The fishermen in the villages of Kronjo, Kemiri, Mauk, Sukadiri, Pakuhaji, Teluk Naga and many others have been complaining that their livelihood is being severely affected by the fences. They have to go a circuitous way to reach the open sea.

Then came Muhammad Said Didu, the former Secretary of the Ministry of State-Owned Enterprise (BUMN). Said has been vocal in criticising the development of Pantai Indah Kapuk 2 (PIK2) in the area. PIK2 is part of a massive real estate development project comprising townships, residences, commercial properties, hotels, industrial estates, and recreational hotspots. The fact that Jokowi granted the developers a National Strategic Project (PSN) status has raised eyebrows.

PSN, just like Malaysia’s Land Acquisition Act is not meant to facilitate private undertakings by conglomerates. Many believed that the PIK2 PSN project should not sacrifice the interests of the local community and ecosystem. By using PSN, the developers have been accused of intimidating land owners into selling their land below market prices.

Naturally the fences created lots of interests. Who was behind them? Are they the same people behind PIK2? Interestingly, a group of fishermen calling themselves Jaringan Rakyat Pantura (North Coast People’s Network) have claimed that they did it. Since the cost of erecting the bamboo is estimated at Rp4bil or RM1.2mil, their claim sounds like a big joke. The developers of PIK2 categorically denied they are behind the fences.

Here comes Prabowo. He ordered the Indonesian navy to dismantle the fences. On Saturday last week, about 600 navy personnel descended upon Tangerang, with fishing boats tagging along. It was a scene out of the movie Jaws, where fishermen merrily went out to sea to hunt the man-eating great white shark.

Even Indonesian filmmakers could not have thought of a better story line. Despite a direct order from Prabowo, the Minister for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Sakti Wahyu Trenggono, opposed the dismantling of the fences. “Such evidence must not be taken down before we know who is responsible,” he said.

To add salt to injury, Minister of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning and Head of National Land Agency Nusron Wahid confirmed that 263 certificates of Right of Ownership and Building Use Rights have been given out, mostly to the people responsible for PIK2.

Giving certificates where there is no land? That confirmed earlier speculation that whoever was behind the fences was planning a massive reclamation programme.

It is an explosive revelation. On Wednesday, Sakti Wahyu, together with Nusron and Chairperson of Komisi 4 DPR (Commission 4 of the House of Representatives), Siti Hediati Suharto, and senior army personnel were at a media conference reiterating Prabowo’s intention to see the fences are dismantled.

Lo and behold! We are beginning to see the tiger in Prabowo roaring now!

Johan Jaafar is a veteran journalist. He writes extensively on Indonesian culture, literature and politics. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.

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