People Versus Power in Indonesia

Students protesting in front of the Jakarta police headquarters on August 29, 2025 | Maria Cynthia / Wikimedia Commons

Sana Jaffrey provides commentary on Indonesia’s mass protests in an article for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. With a weakening economy, and channels of democratic representation and accountability effectively shut, the Indonesian people have taken to the streets to voice their grievances.

Thousands of protesters converged on Indonesia’s national parliament in Jakarta to condemn a recent hike in lawmakers’ pay amid deepening economic hardship. Several members of parliament dismissed these concerns, with some openly mocking critics.

Public anger turned into nationwide outrage after a video surfaced showing a police truck running over a motorcycle taxi driver during the protest. Enraged demonstrators torched police stations and local parliament buildings in multiple cities, where at least nine more people died. Crowds also looted homes of the three lawmakers accused of mocking the public, as well as Finance Minister Sri Mulyani, who has been leading the government’s austerity measures.

Scenes of widespread chaos prompted comparisons to the violence of the 1998 Asian Financial Crisis, which toppled Suharto’s thirty-one-year rule. The turmoil that followed brought widespread ethnic violence and rapid leadership turnover, instilling a deep fear of inter-elite conflict.

Subsequently, Indonesia’s democratic architecture was designed to accommodate rivals through collusive power-sharing among political, economic, and social elites. This bargain has delivered stability—the past two elected presidents each completed two uninterrupted terms. But it has also produced an untenable accountability deficit, making elected officials unanswerable to voters. This collusive setup has been largely underwritten by a growing economy, which allowed politicians to pass on temporary dividends to the poor without meaningful representation.