Writing this just to keep a personal record.
On Thursday, 22 August 2024, there were multiple protests on the streets of several major cities in Indonesia. The cause? Well, if you want the details that's a bit difficult to decipher, but the short version is that the current reigning president is attempting to muck up our laws to allow his unqualified son to take a governmental role. He did this on top of various blatant actions to cement his power and those of his relatives. His eldest son is already going to be vice president after an election that was rife with issues.
If you want more details, Erin Cook wrote a short explainer of how things became this way.
It's interesting to me, the way that in many other countries this might not seem like a big deal at all but here it's enough to bring people down to the streets. Like, this is tame compared to what the Philippines or Venezuela or Russia is going through. Ah hell, even the United States of America, often touted as the most democratic nation on earth, only have two (only two) political parties in power. We have multiple; it does oftentimes boil down to cults of personalities, but they make pretty good check and balance for each other. Part of what our lord president is doing is consolidating things such that there are those on his side and the increasingly malnourished opposition. This wouldn't make us very different from the US; which is to say, we'll still have our democracy, but it's enough push to get people down to the streets.
And you know what, I am so, so happy that people are going down. It makes me suddenly so proud to be Indonesian, that our people have the insight to know how far things can go—the nepotism, the maneuvering, the consolidations—and to attempt to fight back before it gets any worse. It's the wisdom of our history, I suppose. In 1998, people took to the streets to end the 32-year dictatorial reign of President Soeharto. That was, mind you, not a good year, and the riots were horrible, but I suppose the memory bolsters us. His reign tells us what to watch for; how it ended tells us how we can stop it.
Thankfully, the protests seem to be successful, at least for the direct demand from it. They canceled the law-muck-up that were planned for Thursday, and there were enough eyes on the meetings on subsequent days (including one on Saturday night that was possibly illegally livestreamed online). The president's son, as far as I know, is no longer eligible for that governmental role. They also fulfill the other part of the demand, which lowers electoral threshold and allows more parties to up their candidate.
So Thursday's protests (and subsequent actions on Friday to Monday) were mostly successful, but didn't actually change the political landscape significantly. It did though, change the civil atmosphere. More people are more vigilant of whatever the hell the government is up to. There was a hunger for more direct civilian action. Ah heck, on the protest on August 27th, somebody brought a guillotine to the presidential palace in Yoyakarta.
https://x.com/joeyakarta/status/1828360396367073305
So I'm decently confident that this is the spark of, well, if not real changes, that at least it will stop further escalation towards dictatorship. The people are watching and the people will revolt if pushed. Even when the minutiae is complex, there are enough intellectuals to decipher them, manage the logistics, and rally the mass. Honestly the last few days have been incredibly heartening from a civilian point of view.
Unfortunately, the recent protests also reveal how much the cops are bastards. Police brutality in every city, from singling out civilians to beat up, to throwing tear gases at people who weren't even part of the protests, to showing off in social media of how they're gonna kidnap and torture us. Artists online were getting intimidating messages and I heard some went to their doorstep? The cops were on some insane shit.
https://x.com/CNNIndonesia/status/1826856026232291599
But let's go back to more brighter topic. I wanna talk about the absolutely hilarious sparks that started the movement. Did you know it was just some weebs being goofy on twitter dot com?
https://x.com/BudiBukanIntel/status/1826064891599638970
On 3 am, August 21st. Twitter user @/PJalawira posted an obviously fictional tweet thread about how the military has occupied the government. Also in on the joke, Twitter user @/BudiBukanIntel (a handle that means "Budi isn't an insider"), posted a frame from a series of analog horror, a blue background with our national emblem the Garuda on it and the text "Emergency Warning".
It was, I repeat, just the two of them joking around. But then, a few hours later during daytime, parliament announced that they were going to overturn the accepted constitution (in such a way that the president's son can run for governor). Somehow, that blue frame were shared all over the social networks, a rallying cry. Soon even news websites and respected political figures started posting it. Logistics were planned, time and place were secured, and suddenly there was a mass rally. On the very next day the protests happened, across multiple cities. It was kinda nuts seeing how quickly it all came together.
https://x.com/callmetimo/status/1826826451737596370
I got a few more stories I could tell, like the way we start calling the president by his deadname for occult reasons, or how some news accounts have been relentlessly subtweeting the president, or how the one nice guy that people are wishing really hard would take governorship was the one who first received Prince Diponegoro's sacred staff from our colonizer, inviting ire from the president who was supposed to do the deed. What a wild week that was, even from someone who couldn't go down to the street and have just been monitoring from home.
Hopefully it'll be the start of something better for the country. Yeah, I want to be optimistic. Less idiocy from the government, more prosperity for the people.
