Political campaigns are just like the movies. Politicians comprise a cast of characters who play their respective roles within a well-conceived made-up narrative complete with surprising plot twists and frustrating cliffhangers. What we see in the movies sometimes reflects reality. What we witness in political campaigns can be more absurd than reality. When elections become nothing more than a popularity contest, platforms, plans of action, and policy reforms take a back seat. Candidates will do everything they can to outperform their opponents and gain the most votes. Elections then become a zero-sum game. Such is the case of Indonesia’s presidential election earlier this year in which Prabowo Subianto, an ex-general and the dictator Suharto’s son-in-law,  emerged as the victor after clinching 59 percent or more than 96 million of the votes cast in the election. And just like the movies, Prabowo’s real-life story is peppered with surprising plot twists and frustrating cliffhangers.

From Zero to Hero

Prabowo’s victory in the 2024 Indonesian presidential election comes on the heels of two successive defeats in the 2014 and 2019 elections where Joko Widodo secured the win in both instances. Despite that, Prabowo stayed in the public eye particularly so when Widodo appointed him as the country’s defense minister following the 2019 elections. Prabowo has been a long-standing populist with obvious authoritarian inclinations. In both the 2014 and 2019 elections, he used divisive rhetoric to mobilize support from the masses. He pitted ‘the pure people’ against ‘the corrupt elite’ that comprised the relatively wealthy Chinese Indonesians who have been leeching off the country and victimizing the average citizen. Prabowo likewise claimed that Indonesian politics does not reflect the “will of the people.” All of these to no avail. In previous elections, Prabowo’s rigid demeanor and bleak persona surely did not resonate with the masses. For Prabowo to win this time around, an image makeover was all he needed.

Notwithstanding a shadowed past, Prabowo successfully rebranded himself from that of a surly military man with a track record of human rights violations to that of a playful and humorous personality. Social media played a key role in Prabowo’s image makeover. Videos of him dancing at campaign sorties went viral on TikTok. With about 13 million followers on Instagram, Prabowo showed a more relatable side of him through snapshots as mundane as feeding his pet cat and even posting a photograph of a simple meal of nasi ampok or corn rice. Of course, Prabowo’s offline and online behavior were all part of a comprehensive political strategy of portraying himself as a “harmless grandpa” specifically targeted at younger Indonesians who never experienced or have miniscule knowledge about his involvement in Suharto’s brutal dictatorship. And these achieved his desired outcome.

The Fame Game

Orson Welles, widely regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, remarked that, “Popularity should be no scale for the election of politicians. If it would depend on popularity, Donald Duck and the Muppets would take seats in [the] senate.” In today’s political landscape, however, politicians increasingly resemble Donald Duck and the Muppets. Electoral politics essentially becomes a popularity contest and nothing more. In a frenzied age of social media, fame has become the name of the game measured by likes, hearts, shares, and views. In this game, Prabowo played so well that he became a viral sensation overnight.

We can make sense of Prabowo’s shifting political masquerades through Moffitt’s (2016) performative populism framework. This framework contends that populism is less about an ideology and is best understood as a political style. Moffitt (2016) defines political style as “the repertoires of embodied, symbolically mediated performance made to audiences” intended for creating and navigating the domains of political power. Populism, conceived as a political style, appeals to the people in a myriad of ways such as espousing an anti-establishment attitude through the denial of expert knowledge, or through emotionalization or affective engagement. 

The implications are far-reaching such that political actors are impelled to adopt a populist style to attract media attention and become successful in the political arena (Moffitt 2016). Prabowo did just exactly that as he skillfully played a character that had millions of Indonesians entranced. Underneath Prabowo’s façade, however, lie several ugly truths.

Whitewashing History, Eroding Democracy

There’s likely a deeper and more sinister agenda behind Prabowo’s image transformation. While the most practical goal was winning the polls, Prabowo’s image rebranding effectively whitewashed crucial moments in Indonesia’s recent history. Lest the world forget, Prabowo was involved in the abduction of student activists in 1998 and had a hand in a series of massacres during the counter-insurgency operation in East Timor in the 1980s. Prabowo has successfully evaded accountability for past wrongdoing. By taking on a friendlier persona, he did not only win the hearts and minds of Indonesians to get them to vote for him, it also enabled him to sweep all the disquieting controversies and his dismal human rights record under the rug. 

What is more alarming is that younger Indonesians bought the idea of Prabowo’s whitewashed persona. But young people should not take all the blame. Observers suggest that while millennials and Gen Zs have more access to information than older generations, this has not necessarily led to a better and more nuanced awareness on social issues past and present. Younger Indonesians are also more concerned about issues and problems that will likely affect their future such as the environment, education, and economy. While this future-oriented perspective is acceptable, entirely disregarding past controversies and unresolved issues as factors in selecting a candidate is too much to bear. It enables individuals like Prabowo to continually evade accountability. This in turn cultivates a culture of impunity, undermines the rule of law, and ultimately erodes democracy.

Prabowo’s performative populist style, with the main goal of luring voters into his side, makes a clear case of chameleon politics in that politicians conveniently change the color of their skin to fit their changing environment or worse to hide their true colors. Now that the election is over and things go back to business as usual, prospects for democracy in Indonesia appear to be grim. While it is hasty to prejudge Prabowo’s presidency, his disreputable track record and scheming ways cast a long shadow over Southeast Asia’s largest democracy.

Reference
Moffitt, Benjamin. The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016).