The finger-pointing came from the president himself, according to reporting by the country’s premier investigative news magazine Tempo. Prabowo has reportedly worried in the past that his phone had been compromised and that Listyo was behind it, so much so that he’d enlisted aides to warn off the then-police chief. Which raises a blunt question: how accurate are the allegations? Is the president, a man who spent a lifetime in the military fending off threats real and perceived, jumping at shadows as his popularity plummets and the hard reality of governance knocks the palace?
Police said 11 phones, four USB drives and an iPad had been confiscated from two properties in South Jakarta, allegedly the sites of operations. At this stage, no further evidence has been made public.
Evidence may be scant, but the security response has been swift. While the presence of security personnel on the streets of Jakarta is as common as satay chicken vendors, the scale and speed with which a reported 21,000 marines arrived in the capital within days stunned. The roll-out prompted whispers of a potential coup from within the military against the president, or worse.
Nothing quite so dire eventuated. The show of force is being read as a presidential flex against any emerging political opposition, and if it scares off the simmering student-led protests as well, consider that a bonus.
But it marks an explosive end to the truce of sorts between Prabowo and Widodo – one that has held, uneasily, since Prabowo’s second election defeat to Widodo in 2019, when Widodo brought him into government as defence minister to help quell violent post-election unrest. The appointment worked, but, paired with Widodo’s own undermining of democratic institutions (Opens in new window) in the country, has led to a period of sustained hyper-securitisation and a legislative agenda heavy on consolidating power for elites and rolling back democratic gains.
As Listyo and his alleged co-conspirators languish in detention, Gibran is looking at impeachment over a convoluted case in which it is alleged he misled, either deliberately or accidentally, election officials over his high school certificate. Gibran attended secondary school in Singapore and a bridging course at the University of Technology Sydney. Calls from across the House and supporters of Prabowo to launch impeachment proceedings suddenly went cold (Opens in new window) as the police scandal unfolded. Gibran on Tuesday told Probowo he intended to resign (Opens in new window), but this could be a ploy for time, a short-lived respite for the embattled Widodo clan.
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