Indonesia’s Explosive Week
The unrest was tinged with memories of the 1998 riots.
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The house of the finance minister and two parliamentarians looted. Local parliament buildings in Kediri, Jember, and Makassar set ablaze. The office of the deputy governor of East Java also set alight. Another government building burnt in Bandung followed by a night raid by police and military on local universities. Police stations attacked and burnt. A prominent activist arrested in Jakarta. Ten dead.
The spark was a stray comment by a member of Indonesia’s parliament late last month about MPs’ generous housing allowances. Online, outraged citizens calculated that parliamentarians’ total income after salary and benefits amounts to over Rp 3 million ($182) a day—higher than the monthly minimum wage in some areas. The accelerant of unrest was the death on August 28 of Affan Kurniawan, a motorbike driver for a ride hailing app, killed by a police armorer vehicle that ran him over as he passed near the riots. Outrage and violence followed.
The riots now seem to be subsiding, but they have left the country reeling. The date on the lips of many is 1998. That year, riots rocked the country leading to the fall of the 31-year dictatorship of President Suharto—the father-in-law of Indonesia’s currently serving president, Prabowo Subianto.
But how instructive is the parallel? On the one hand, everyone admits that while this year’s unrest was shocking, May 1998 was far worse. There have been far fewer deaths. And there has been no widespread looting or mass rapes, which, twenty years ago, predominantly targeted Chinese Indonesians.
On the other hand, many of the rioters’ complaints—economic precarity, violence by the security forces, anger at a disconnected and corrupt elite—are finding an echo today. Some careful comparison can be useful.
Violence
A key difference between 1998 and 2025 is that the violence last week was thankfully much less widespread. It is a matter of 10 deaths in the recent unrest versus an estimated 1,188 in 1998. At least some of this needs to be attributed to Indonesia’s security services being much more restrained.
Some will doubtless object to the use of the term “restraint.” Some deaths seem to have come at the hands of security services in the recent unrest. The driver run over Thursday. Two deaths linked to tear gas. And three beatings apparently at the hands of security personnel. Police and military used rubber bullets and tear gas on a mass scale. The UN has called for an investigation.
However, compare this to 1998. That year saw security services use not just tear gas and rubber bullets but occasional live fire against crowds. Most infamously, four students were killed at Trisakti University when police opened fire on unarmed protestors. There were cases of shootings of live ammunition at other demonstrations.
More murkily, security services were implicated in some of the worst violence. Many suspect the mass “mob violence,” particularly against Chinese Indonesians, was at least partially instigated by elements of the military pursuing their own agenda. The name of Prabowo, then a special forces major, surfaced in the Indonesian government’s own inquiry into the matter. Prabowo may now be president. But for now, at least, it does seem that the security services feel more constrained in the levels of force they can use. Prabowo has backed the police response to the protests. The policeman who ran over Kurniawan has been fired.
On the side of protestors, four died at the hands of popular action in the recent unrest, all in Makassar. Three died when the city parliament was burnt down and one suspected security services informer was beaten to death.
This may be at least partly linked to the less violent tactics used by the military. Equally, it may be that without apparent covert instigation by security services, few Indonesians are keen to form violent mobs attacking fellow civilians.
Economics
Look at the headlines and the economic situation today in Indonesia looks fine. Growth at 5.12% Q2 of 2025. Inflation low. Unemployment the lowest since 1998.
Peer under the hood, though, and there are worrying signs, with many suspecting the growth figures have been fiddled. Foreign Direct Investment has dropped sharply. Consumer spending—which accounts for over half of GDP—is troublingly weak. Trump’s tariffs are starting to hit, with news of manufacturing layoffs. There’s worrying food price inflation. And government finances look a little tight thanks to unwise policies.
Still, none of this is comparable to 1998, when the situation was frankly apocalyptic. The 1997 Asian financial crisis turned a tiger economy into a basket case. The rupiah plunged against the dollar. Inflation soared. Government bonds were downgraded to junk. Millions were flung out of work and into deep poverty.
All this means the situation today is fundamentally less volatile. The social contract may be frayed, but it is not broken. There are not millions of desperate angry people out of work. And the government is not teetering, forced to turn to a foreign bailout which, in 1998, was used as a tool to help force political change.
Leadership and issues
In 1998, there was a clear alternative elite leadership that people opposed to Suharto could turn to. Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of President Sukarno—who would go on to be president herself—and Budiman Sudjatmiko (albeit in jail in 1998) stood as clear rallying points opposed to the regime. Elites (particularly leaders of Muslim organizations) who once collaborated with Suharto also began to defect, helping channel the instability of protest into a new political order. Certainly, years of protest in the 1990s against Suharto’s corrupt authoritarianism had helped create ideas about what a program for reform might look like. But leadership at an elite and counter-elite level helped see these realized when the political moment was ripe.
By contrast, Indonesia’s protests today are like many protests since the rise of the internet—extremely decentralized and almost leaderless in their nature. In a perceptive recent essay, the leading Indonesia scholar Edward Aspinall notes that the past five years have seen five major waves of youth-led protest focused on corruption and backsliding into authoritarianism. However, unlike in the 1990s it is hard to point to leading figures able to plausibly form a new national leadership. Instead, Indonesians have a generalized disdain of almost all political elites as implicated in the corruption of the democratic system.
Former rebels against the regime are now compromised. Former president Megawati retains a cult following in her party but no longer holds the sheen of opposition. Dynasty building, wealthy, and warily compromising with Prabowo, she acts like any other member of the political elite. Meanwhile, Budiman Sudjatmiko—imprisoned by Suharto—now serves in the government of Suharto’s son-in-law Prabowo.
This may be shifting. Some new faces often associated with the NGO and think tank world are trying to synthesize a program. One popular set of demands, the so-called “17+8” list (17 short-term demands, 8 long-term demands)—canvassed online, written up by young intellectuals, and promoted by meme accounts—has gained serious traction. Some senior politicians have ostentatiously signed on.
The demands include an investigation into the death of Kurniawan and police violence during protests, salary freezes for parliamentarians, soldiers deployed during riots to return to barracks, anti-corruption measures, tax reform, and increased salaries and job protection for workers.
Impact
For many reasons, the impact of 2025 is going to be less than that of 1998. The circumstances, the violence, the demands are all much less extreme. The government for now seems unlikely to commit to wide-reaching reforms, though some compromises and crowd-pleasing gestures are likely.
Without change, more trouble may come. The unrest is a warning sign. Many Indonesians are feeling fed up with the status quo. And, across the world, voters in democratic systems have turned to radical alternatives.
So far Indonesians have not fully embraced this. Prabowo fits with the current model of nationalist strongmen in his tendencies, but while he leaned into this in 2014 and 2019, presenting himself as a hard hand to clean up the country, his 2024 campaign was very different. Implicitly endorsed by President Widodo—with his son as running mate—he was the establishment candidate who cultivated an entirely new image as a cuddly cat-loving grandpa promising continuity.
Come 2029, however, and Indonesians might be in the mood for some stronger medicine.
Joseph Rachman is a freelance reporter based in Jakarta.
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