Editorial: Change of Narratives and the Return of the State

It was a bright Monday morning at the traffic circle in front of Gadjah Mada University, but the mood was anything but calm. Thousands of protesters gathered again, undeterred by President Prabowo Subianto’s weekend directive to the police and military to crack down on so-called “anarchist” demonstrators. Military vehicles patrolled major cities. Police Chief Gen. Listyo Sigit Prabowo appeared in a video allegedly authorizing the use of rubber bullets to stop destructive protesters.

The intimidation was clear. The people, however, were not easily cowed.

These protesters, including students, laborers, and the urban poor, are under no illusions. They know meaningful change won’t come overnight. They understand that confronting a regime like Prabowo’s requires endurance, sacrifice, and strategy. Yet, even as the crowds grow, the state is working furiously to undermine them, not through dialogue or reform, but through narrative warfare.

Prabowo’s government and its loyalists seek to redefine the protests not as genuine expressions of public frustration, but as politically orchestrated chaos. This reframing is strategic, not accidental.

For supporters of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the largest remaining opposition force, though its chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri has been cozying up to Prabowo and is likely to join his government, the protests are seen merely as attempts to delegitimize Prabowo’s administration and topple the ex-general, paving the way for Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka to take over, much like when Soeharto was ousted 27 years ago and his vice president, B.J. Habibie, rose to power.

Adding fuel to this narrative are recent reports of government and police buildings set ablaze in several cities. Social media videos and eyewitness accounts describe unidentified individuals, often men with short hair and coordinated movements, igniting fires before quickly disappearing. The suggestion is clear: the demonstrations are being infiltrated by free riders and provocateurs, potentially from within state-linked groups or even hired actors, whose job is to delegitimize the movement and justify the crackdown.

This tactic is not new. Across the region, from Thailand to Myanmar, state-linked provocateurs have historically been deployed to introduce violence into otherwise peaceful protests, turning public opinion, or at least justifying state violence. Indonesia appears to be returning to that playbook.

Yet for all the effort poured into discrediting the movement, the core message from the ground remains consistent: the people are angry, not at abstract forces, but at a government that seems to mock their suffering.

While thousands chanted against inequality and police brutality in Jakarta, President Prabowo stood in the State Palace, distributing Bintang Jasa, Indonesia’s highest civilian honors, to ministers, family member, aides, and even convicted criminals. It was a surreal image: a glowing ceremony indoors, while smoke rose from the streets outside.

This was more than just poor optics. It was a declaration: this administration is not here to listen. It is here to reward loyalty.

Meanwhile, inside the House of Representatives, lawmakers celebrated the passing of new perks with an actual dance session. Among them was Commission III Deputy Chair Ahmad Sahroni, better known for his Instagram feed of supercars than his legislative work. For a population battling spiraling food prices, unemployment, and crumbling public services, this was salt in an open wound.

Public anger reached a boiling point on August 28th, when a police vehicle was caught on camera ramming through protesters, killing Affan Kurniawan, a young online motorbike driver. The footage went viral. The outrage was immediate.

This wasn’t just another act of excessive force. It was a symbol of how far the police have drifted from their public mandate. From the 2022 Kanjuruhan Stadium disaster to routine torture of suspects, the police have become synonymous with unchecked violence. And despite years of promised reforms, no meaningful change has taken place.

The irony is suffocating. Prabowo, once the son-in-law of Suharto, watched the New Order collapse from within. He saw the people’s fury firsthand. He was dismissed from the military amid allegations of human rights violations. Now, more than two decades later, he’s in power, but acting like a man still haunted by that fall. His obsession with loyalty, medals, and control is not just political strategy. It is psychological armor.

Among the recipients of Prabowo’s recent Bintang Jasa awards were Zulkifli Hasan, the trade minister and a long-time figure in various corruption allegations; Burhanuddin Abdullah, a convicted embezzler; Bahlil Lahadalia, widely criticized for pushing corporate-friendly policies behind closed doors; Hashim Djojohadikusumo, Prabowo’s own brother, whose contributions to public service remain unclear; and Teddy Indra Wijaya, Prabowo’s personal aide, a political nobody elevated purely through loyalty. This isn’t meritocracy but monarchy in disguise.

Rather than being a wake-up call, the protests have become a pretext for expansion of state control. The return of the Leviathan is not subtle. The government is using unrest to justify broader police powers, deepen surveillance, and stifle dissent. This is an authoritarian drift.

More worryingly, the public is beginning to refer to the National Police as “Parcok”, a short for Partai Coklat, or the Brown Party, referencing their uniform color and perceived political alignment. With police openly present at pro-government rallies and cracking down on dissenters, the notion of political neutrality is all but gone.

The very idea of public safety is being inverted. The state now defines safety as obedience. Dissent is chaos. Protest is foreign infiltration. And peace? Peace is silence.

If Prabowo truly wants to avoid reliving the collapse of 1998, he must break the cycle, not reenact it.

The protesters have made their demands clear. They want the immediate replacement of the police chief and a comprehensive reform of the security apparatus. They want a cabinet reshuffle to remove corrupt and incompetent ministers, rather than rewarding them with honors. They call for a cut in the excessive salaries and perks enjoyed by legislators, whose opulence now serves as a daily insult to ordinary Indonesians. They reject the government’s plan to introduce new taxes and raise existing ones, which disproportionately hurt the poor. They demand the cancellation of opaque programs like the so-called “super fund” Danantara and the costly, poorly executed Free Meal program. These funds, they argue, should be redirected toward job creation, wage subsidies, and rebuilding public trust. Additionally, as a cosmetic political action, the chairmen of political parties such as Nasdem and PAN have withdrawn problematic members, including Ahmad Sahroni and Eko Patrio, from the House of Representatives.

Instead, what we see is a presidency consumed by insecurity, obsessed with personal loyalty, and blinded by the illusion that popularity and power are the same thing.

History may not repeat itself precisely. But it echoes. And if the government continues to dismiss protest as political theater while letting provocateurs set the stage on fire, then Prabowo may find himself, like Suharto before him, watching the palace gates tremble, not from foreign forces, but from the fury of the people he failed to serve.

Omong-Omong Media’s editorial is also published in The Jakarta Post every week.