Indonesia: masses surge up through a crack in the bourgeois state

On the morning of Thursday 22 August, upon learning that parliament planned to change an election law to the benefit of President Jokowi’s youngest son, tens of thousands of youths took to the streets and stormed parliament. 

The demonstrations spread like wildfire. Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Surabaya, Bali, Medan, Semarang, Makassar, Lampung, Banda Aceh: in one city after another, regional parliament buildings and city halls were breached and ransacked by the students.

The upsurge caught the government off guard, and it was forced to beat a retreat. In an effort to calm the masses, the plan to revise the election law was cancelled by the deputy speaker. But this might be too little too late. The masses have now gathered their courage and have begun to move everywhere. The movement so far has shown no signs of receding.

At the same time, the authorities are ramping up their repression. Already, hundreds have been arrested and many more injured. In Jakarta alone, 300 demonstrators were picked up by the police. Plain-clothes police and intelligence officers are posted everywhere to identify and weed out whoever they consider to be provocateurs.

This is a classic carrot-and-stick tactic, of dangling a carrot with one hand while violently swinging their stick with another hand. But the masses no longer fear police repression. They are becoming more radical with each baton swing.

We are truly living in a world of sharp turns and sudden changes. Just a few weeks ago, Hasina's regime in Bangladesh was overthrown. Now, the gates of Indonesian parliament have been torn down, unable to contain the anger of the youth and working people. 

“Revolution, revolution, revolution!” shouted some of the student demonstrators. We are not in a revolution yet, but a revolutionary spirit has begun to rise amongst the youth, who are furious at the decay of democracy.

Inflammable material

Everything seemed to be calm and stable after the controversial presidential election earlier this year. The ruling class was brimming with confidence that the government transition from Jokowi to Prabowo in October would go smoothly. 

In the midst of the deepest crisis of capitalism, opinion polls and election results are a poor reflection of the consciousness of the people / Image: Nafisathallah, Wikimedia Commons

How could it not? Just three days ago PKS (The Prosperous Justice Party) – the main opposition party to Jokowi and Prabowo during the presidential election earlier this year – declared that it was joining the Prabowo-Jokowi coalition (KIM), thus securing a super majority for the upcoming government. KIM now controls more than 75 percent of the seats. Ironically, only PDI-P (The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle), the party responsible for putting Jokowi in power and consolidating his position, stands outside this coalition.

In the most recent survey, Jokowi is still the most popular president, despite controversies over his interference in the presidential election and his son running as the vice-president to Prabowo. In June, according to Litbang Kompas, Jokowi had a 75 percent approval rating, the highest for any president in recent memory. 

But in the midst of the deepest crisis of capitalism, opinion polls and election results are a poor reflection of the consciousness of the people. The cost-of-living crisis and the soaring prices of basic necessities; the huge wave of layoffs, particularly in the garment industry; the shameless corruption and nepotism of the ruling class; the widening inequality; all these have built up a colossal amount of disappointment and anger among the masses, which is not captured by quantitative indicators such as polls and ballot boxes. Now these have all spilled out onto the streets after the DPR arbitrarily changed the election law.

The spark

The spark for the movement came from the undemocratic manoeuvers of the ruling clique. On Wednesday 21 August, the Constitutional Court ruled to keep the minimum age for candidates at 30, and that parties with under 20 percent of seats in the assembly could field a candidate in the upcoming regional elections.

Within 24 hours, the KIM-controlled Parliament tabled an emergency motion to reverse this. This reversal would have allowed President Jokowi’s youngest son, 29 year old Kaesang, to run for governor of Central Java, and for Prabowo-Jokowi’s coalition (KIM) to effectively run unopposed for the post of Jakarta governor.

The Constitutional Court had attempted to block this because it was concerned about the move undermining any semblance of democracy. At the same time, it fears the widespread negative perception of Jokowi's dynasty-building. Using his position as president, Jokowi has ensured that many of his children and relatives occupy important political positions.

It is possible that the issue of the electoral law could also spark something bigger / Image: Hariadhi, Wikimedia Commons

In the recent presidential election just six months ago, his oldest son Gibran was able to run and eventually be elected as the vice president due to a controversial decision by the Constitutional Court that changed the presidential age limit. At that time, the Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court was none other than Gibran’s uncle, the husband of Jokowi’s sister, who was put in that position by Jokowi.

This scandal rocked the nation, and thus it would be a further travesty if the election law is again flouted by Jokowi’s coalition to advance his youngest son. 

The Jokowi coalition, which feels that it has a very firm footing, clearly only cares about their narrow and short-term interests, even if this threatens the long-term interest of the entire system. The court on the other hand – under the pressure from a section of the ruling class – seeks to restore the illusion of democracy and a ‘rules-based order’, an illusion that is already wearing very thin in the eyes of the masses. 

However, whether with the parliament’s or the court’s version of the election law wins out, whether there are one, two, or ten candidates, the working class will have no real choice at all. All the candidates represent the interests of the capitalist class.

The Constitutional Court is no impartial arbiter of ‘democracy’. Its decision to lower the threshold requirement to 10 percent clearly favours PDI-P, who was previously barred from running a gubernatorial candidate in Jakarta because it didn’t meet the 20 percent seat threshold. Therefore, it is not impossible that there was pressure from this big party on the Constitutional Court.

Of course, this movement is not only about the election law. The controversy is a lightning rod that has concentrated the people’s anger.

As Hegel said, necessity expresses itself through accident, and a society as full of contradictions as Indonesia has no shortage of such accidents. Let us remember that last month, the protests against the Hasina regime initially arose against rigged public job quotas, an issue that seemed to affect only newly graduating students.

But the quota issue became an expression of all that was wrong with Hasina’s capitalist regime, and the movement soon turned into a revolution that mobilised all layers of working people. It is possible that the issue of the electoral law could also spark something bigger.

Youth in revolt

As in Bangladesh, students and young people stand at the forefront of the movement. The youth has always been the most sensitive barometer of the mood of society. The youth, including the sons and daughters of the working class, carry not only the anxieties of their generation about their bleak future under capitalism, but also the grievances of their mothers and fathers who are crushed by the same system. They fear nothing and have little respect for the existing order.

When the demonstrations showed no sign of abating even after heavy police repression, and instead became increasingly militant and began to attract widespread popular sympathy, the ruling class attempted to quell them through negotiation. PDI-P politicians, as the official opposition, were sent to discuss with the students.

In front of the torn-down gate of parliament, Masinton Pasaribu met the students to assure them that the PDI-P fraction would fight with them against the revision of the election law. Unexpectedly, they were immediately shouted down by the students, who defiantly responded “What is your guarantee? What is your guarantee?”.

The students were right. Not a single word from these politicians can be used as a guarantee. Not even the lousiest pawnbroker would accept their words as a collateral. The only guarantee is the power of the youth and workers on the streets. Only the language of mass action is understood by the ruling class.

The student representatives also emphasised their independence from and disgust towards the existing bourgeois parties. “We will keep fighting without any association with any political parties,” they told Masinton. This is the right attitude. Indeed, the dispute between the Constitutional Court and the Parliament is part of the struggle between political elites for the upcoming regional elections.

PDI-P complicit

The PDI-P this time presents itself as the opposition, as the defender of democracy against Jokowi’s political dynasty. But this hypocrisy cannot fool the students. “The birth of Jokowi this time is also because of PDI-P,” one of the student representatives shouted at Masinton, and was immediately greeted with cheers.

The working class have seen no fundamental change in their lives after the 1998 Reformasi that promised so much / Image: YayasanLBHIndonesia, Twitter

This is the nature of bourgeois democracy, where opponents become friends, friends become opponents, and so on and so forth. Since the Reformasi movement of 1998, dozens of parties have emerged. But all of them have represented the same rotten bourgeois politics, which now provoke nothing but disgust from the masses. The working class have seen no fundamental change in their lives after the 1998 Reformasi that promised so much. 

It was this fact that underpinned Jokowi's popularity ten years ago. He came onto the political scene as a figure seemingly standing outside all the rotten political parties. These bourgeois parties, especially the PDI-P at the time, had no choice but to give more power to Jokowi. The entire legitimacy of the system rested on the people's illusion that he was a Messiah who would bring about change.

Raised from a carpenter to the King of Java, a Little Bonaparte concentrated power into his hands and balanced between various interests. Even Prabowo and Gerindra, his long-time enemies, bowed to him. 

Jokowi also raised himself to be the great patron, doling out positions and privileges to his clients, giving out favours like Don Corleone. He had been very well trained in this art by his previous patron, Megawati, who herself is part of a long-standing political dynasty. 

The liberals who are now viciously criticising Jokowi are the same people who were previously so enamoured by him. We have not forgotten how these liberals lavished endless praise on him, strengthening people's illusions in him, helping him to centralise power.

The same liberals are now pinning their hopes on the former governor of Jakarta, Anies Baswedan, to run again ‘in the name of democracy’. In the previous election in 2017, these liberals strongly condemned Anies for mobilising reactionary Islamic forces to support his campaign, and relying upon bigoted attacks against his minority Chinese Christian opponent Ahok. Now Anies is the ‘lesser evil’.

In the current movement, the liberals are promoting the slogan ‘save democracy’. But democracy for who? For which class and in whose interest? This is, they fail to say. For them, democracy would be saved if PDI-P – the party that has been repeatedly implicated in corruption cases, that is responsible for creating the hated King of Java, that passed the Omnibus Law and other anti-workers policies, that betrayed the 1998 Reformasi – could compete in the election and become the opposition. This is democracy for the liberals: bourgeois democracy.

‘Guard the Constitutional Court's decision,’ our liberals urge, ‘because its decision is final and binding.’ In reality, the Constitutional Court is not a democratic institution. It is composed of judges appointed by the ruling class to represent the interests of the rich. Where was the Constitutional Court when there were so many anti-worker laws in favour of investors?

The Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, parliament, the president, the police, the army: all of them are equally rotten ruling class institutions.Working people must not put their trust in any of them. The current student movement must draw a clear line of demarcation from these impotent liberals.

Ultimately, the arbitrary trampling of democracy by parliament is not an aberration. The anti-democratic policies of the ruling class are inevitable under capitalism. 

To ensure a genuine democracy for the working people, we must fight for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. There is no other way. More and more young people are beginning to reach this conclusion, not because revolutionaries have explained it to them, but because of their own experience of the rottenness of existing ‘democracy’.

After being confronted with explosive mass action, the parliament was forced to cancel the revision of the election law. This is proof of the real power of mass action. The ruling parties may have hoped that this concession would defuse the movement, but the masses have tasted the fruits of victory. They are not returning to their old routine any time soon. More demonstrations are being prepared. The youth are not letting up the pressure. Workers too have begun to mobilise to join the movement. In East Java, workers have planned to take to the streets this week.

This first round has been won by the masses. But there will be further rounds as the crisis of capitalism leaves no room for stability. What the ruling class has conceded it will snatch back as soon as the opportunity presents itself. 

Last week's victory has not answered all the anxieties of the youth and working people. But it has given them a glimmer of hope and confidence that, organised and mobilised, they can win.

Shattered are the Prabowo regime's hopes that they can smoothly transition to power and that their fat coalition can do whatever it wants. At the end of the day, their election result is just a piece of paper. It can be annulled by mass action, which represents the real power of democracy.