Jakartan Reflections on the May 22 Protests
After spending my first month in Sumatra with PUSaKO, I have moved on to Jakarta, where I am currently interning with Perludem, a related body analyzing the electoral process of Indonesia.
Jakarta is quiet and peaceful at present, in striking contrast to the turbulence that plagued the streets a month ago, when riots broke out and several were left dead in the streets. Police suppression was criticised by some, with allegations of undue brutality and the use of inappropriate tactics and weaponry in dispelling protestors. Whether or not police actions crossed the line into brutality, however, the actions of the protestors themselves left a considerable amount to be desired. Cars and buildings were burnt, shops looted, and hordes of rioters formed violent mobs denying the use of the streets to the city's more peaceful denizens. This rioting was decidedly notable, and decidedly noted, with numerous international publications and news media commenting on the carnage sweeping the streets.
Unsurprisingly, Jakartans are loath to believe that this situation is entirely unique to Indonesian democracy. As a part of the political process disputing the accession to the presidency of incumbent Joko Widodo, comparisons have been drawn here to the marches that marked the also-disputed election of President Donald Trump in the United States. Yet the actions in Jakarta conspicuously contrasted those in the United States, notwithstanding the fact that the population there was similarly riven (at the very least numerically, where the popular vote was even closer than in Indonesia), and a high degree of hostility was articulated by the opposing parties. Polls preceding the declaration of the election result demonstrated a disturbing willingness to dispute a declared result and even to resort to violence, on both sides. Nonetheless, the numerous protests in the days leading up to and following Trump's inauguration saw only limited scuffles between protestors, celebrants, and the police, far from the chaos that shut down Jakarta.
A large part of this may be a difference in the attitudes taken by the candidates toward the result of the election, in particular in advance of the declaration of the results. Despite her comments regarding the suspension of civility, Clinton did not attempt to organize mass protests to explicitly challenge the election results. Additionally, while the discrepancy between the popular vote and the declaration of the Electoral College met with criticism in the United States, the result of the election was held to have followed the established democratic processes.
Indonesia saw a very different situation, in which the losing candidates, anticipating the declaration of their loss, took it upon themselves to organize and support protest mobs assembling in the streets. Additionally, the candidates explicitly challenged the legitimacy of the democratic process as performed, alleging corruption and irregularities that deliberately aimed at scuppering Prabowo Subianto and ensuring Joko Widowo's election.
The protestors thus went out into the streets with two very different mindsets. In the United States, a sense of resentment against the established system and claimed iniquity in the process itself did not amount to an overarching challenge against the result as an abandonment of democratic principle, although hinting in this direction. In Indonesia, the results were overtly and consistently criticised as a revocation of democracy and an accession of corrupt practices. And in the United States, the protests were, with some notable exceptions, generally more in the nature of largely grassroots assemblies of citizens with diverse beliefs and intentions, whose actions were thus naturally uncoordinated and largely directionless - to the extent that a universal aim existed, it was simply to express anger and frustration at the result. The protests were, again generally, not intended to actually demand that the result be revoked. In contrast, the Indonesian situation involved a highly directed campaign, led by the losing candidates and their supporters, with a clear aim to challenge the result of the election (albeit with somewhat hazy intimations as to the necessary means of doing so), and with locations prescribed by organizers.
Jakarta thus fell briefly to waves of violence in which pent-up masses organized from above took to the streets in designated areas with a reasonably clear and universal goal. While the violence that occurred here is deeply lamentable, it is perhaps also worth heeding the argument that it is not necessarily unique to the political situation here. Although any sane American would prefer to believe that the conditions that prevented the United States election protests from degenerating into riot are irrevocably endemic to the American political climate, it would be suspect to state this as certain. A coincidence of the factors that led to the degeneration of the Jakarta protests - greater coordination from above with a defined aim in challenging the result and demanding revocation or recount - might potentially have had similar effects in just such a tinderbox atmosphere as followed the 2016 election. The thought that their misfortunes might not be unique to their political realities provides a certain degree of cold comfort for Jakartans, but it might also be wise for those of us in the United States to consider the flipside of this truth, and to seek to ensure that we do not come to such heights of political tension again.