Organizer: Indonesia Studies Programme at ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute
Type/Location: Hybrid / Singapore
Description:
Not much of significance has happened in the first 100 days of the Prabowo government. The more fundamental question is whether the economic, political and cultural conditions of mainstream Indonesia 25 years after the fall of Suharto allow Prabowo the scope to take Indonesia forward. There has been no qualitative change to the basic under-industrialisation of the economy, with major challenges on the food production front. The monopoly of political decision-making in a cartel of New Order era parties remains solid. Challenges to the cultural monopoly of New Order era value have not yet made an impact. The stability – or stagnation – of this situation also presents a challenge to critical civil society which, while growing in activism, has remained impotent, with no significant wins for reforms. The pressure for a social opposition to transform into a political opposition, in the form of new parties, continues. The Labour Party (Partai Buruh) is the most prominent of these but is unlikely to remain alone in the field as a political alternative. Cultural challenges are likely to continue to escalate. However, the country’s overall stagnation remains a constraint on the emergence of political parties with an alternative development programme: what is possible for them to offer?
About the Speakers:
Maxwell Lane is a Visiting Senior Fellow at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore. He has worked as a journalist, a researcher in the Australian Parliament, a human rights activist, a university lecturer, and teacher. His latest books are Indonesia Out of Exile: How Pramoedya’s Buru Quartet Killed a Dictatorship (Penguin 2023), Indonesia and Not, Poems and Otherwise: Anecdotes Scattered (Djaman Baroe, 2023) and Saudara Berdiri di Pihak Yang Mana? Politik Seni Subversif Rendra (Djaman Baroe 2024).
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