Talking Indonesia

Freedom of expression is under attack in Indonesia. Under President Jokowi, protests against the government have been routinely met with repression and intimidation. In 2019 alone, the space for public dissent has shrunk dramatically, as was evident during the presidential election campaign, during demonstrations in Papua and, most recently, during widespread student protests that occurred shortly...

President Jokowi increasing highlights the digital economy and technology as central to Indonesia’s future, quipping during one of the presidential election debates in 2019, ‘In the future, strong countries won’t control weak countries. Fast countries will control slow countries.’ In line with this focus, digital start-ups such as ride-hailing company Go-Jek and e-commerce company Bukalapak have b...

Not long after winning a second term, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo announced that the nation’s capital will be moved from Jakarta to a new site in East Kalimantan. Jokowi said that the decision was mainly motivated by the fact that Jakarta is literally sinking from over-development and it can no longer handle the burden of being Indonesia’s centre of commerce and government. The government has a...

Indonesia is one of the world’s leading emitters of carbon dioxide and the fifth largest producer of coal, both for export and its own domestic use. Recently, President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo reiterated his commitment to reducing Indonesia’s dependence on fossil fuels and has set ambitious renewable energy targets. Indonesia is a signatory to the Paris Accord for climate change. But with Indonesia’s...

Talking Indonesia: Social Mobility Moving up the social ladder is a clear aspiration for many Indonesians – public opinion surveys show a large proportion of those who self-identify as being in the bottom two income quintiles predict they will have moved on within five years. But what are the prospects for young Indonesians today, as they and their peers become better educated and stand to live lo...

Like elsewhere in the world, violent religious extremists in Indonesia are mostly male, but in recent years more and more female extremists have made headlines as they traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State and planned or perpetrated bomb attacks. What drives women to join extremist religious networks? What roles do they play in these networks once they are fully immersed in them? And what ca...

The Constitutional Court has been firmly in the headlines in Indonesia over the past month, because of its role in adjudicating – and dismissing – Prabowo Subianto’s challenge to President Joko Widodo’s victory in the 2019 presidential election. But the influence of the Constitutional Court in shaping the outcome of Indonesian elections is much broader – through various of its decisions, it has re...

Over recent years, concerns about Indonesia's food security have seen a sharp increase in industrial-scale agriculture across the country, including into the forests of West Papua. At the same time, the environmental and social ramifications of monocropping, particularly palm oil, are becoming well-known. Are the customary rights of indigenous peoples being respected in negotiations over land for...

The Indonesian Council of Ulama(MUI) is one of the most influential religious actors in Indonesia. In 2016 and 2017, for example, the organisation was instrumental in orchestrating the protests that led to the downfall of former Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama. The appointment of MUI head Ma’ruf Amin as President Jokowi's running mate in the 2019 presidential election indicated unprecedent...

This year Indonesia was a featured country at the London Book Fair, which followed a similar showcasing of its literature at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2015. Is this a reflection of an expanding and globalising literary scene in Indonesia? Are more diverse voices being heard inside and outside the country, and what are the challenges for making sure that the stories are not lost in translation? To...

The past few years have seen repeated questioning of the independent workings of police, the prosecutors and the courts in Indonesia, ranging from accusations that prosecutions have been used to limit opposition or coerce support for the government, to suspicions that the outcome of high profile cases such as the blasphemy prosecution against then Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama had as muc...

With a huge local market and growing production power, the Indonesian film industry has enormous potential. In recent times, Indonesian films, directors, actors, and other industry professionals are becoming more well-known around the world, not in small part due to a more integrated regional and global distribution network and web-based streaming services such as Netflix. Could films be utilised...

An important part of recent Islamic activism in Indonesia has been the rise of conservative women’s groups such as the Family Love Alliance (Aliansi Cinta Keluarga Indonesia, AILA). Moreover, several conservative female activists joined the 2019 legislative elections as candidates. Campaigning against what they perceive as threats against traditional morality and religious values, these women posi...

In today's episode, the final in the Election 2019 series, we gather the Talking Indonesia team to look back over the presidential and legislative polls and the key developments. What were the key factors in Jokowi's apparent victory? What can we anticipate after Prabowo's claims of victory, despite all reputable quick counts showing him to have lost the election by a clear margin? What were the l...

With less than one week until Indonesia’s simultaneous presidential and legislative elections on the 17th of April, candidates are going all out in a final push to get votes. Running concurrently with the arguably more exciting presidential election, the legislative elections have largely faded into the background and under-analysed. However, there are many important questions about this round of...

Recent months have seen a series of claims by political figures in Indonesia that the 2019 polls may be marked by significant irregularities. Senior political party figures and social media influencers have claimed that the electoral roll has been manipulated or could be hacked, cast doubt over the likely reliability of the vote count, and claimed that the civil service and security forces are bei...

To celebrate the 100th episode of Talking Indonesia, co-hosts Dave McRae, Jemma Purdey, Charlotte Setijadi and Dirk Tomsa come together to revisit some of the major themes of the first 99 episodes. As Indonesia is deep in election mode, they discuss what impact these themes – Islamism, corruption, fake news, economic development, foreign policy, gender – are likely to have on the 17 April election...

As Indonesia’s 2019 elections are drawing closer, public opinion surveys about the electability of Jokowi and his challenger Prabowo Subianto are released with increasing frequency. Though there are some differences between the results, virtually all pollsters agree that Jokowi is currently on track to win a second term. Why has Jokowi been able to maintain his lead in the polls so easily? What ob...

With the 2019 elections now just weeks away, the economy has become a key issue in the campaign. In comparative terms, Indonesia's current GDP growth of over 5 per cent is healthy. However, this is below the 7 per cent President Joko Widodo pledged to deliver during the 2014 campaign. The president's opponents also claim that the government's huge expenditure on major infrastructure projects and s...

Indonesia’s five-yearly elections are now just over a month away, and Talking Indonesia is switching to a weekly format until after polling day on April 17, to cover the key themes, important groups and pivotal developments that will shape the outcome. The first of our pre-election episodes focuses on labour and politics in Indonesia. Unlike many other countries, no labour party or party of the le...

While it is true that Indonesian maids abroad often face terrible conditions, they have more agency than the public often give them credit for, and many also have creative pursuits like fiction writing. Recently, a new genre of literature has developed, one in which – often in short stories – these women reimagine their experiences as domestic workers in foreign lands. What do these literary works...

In contrast to various neighbouring countries and various Western democracies, the collection and use of citizen’s data remains largely unregulated in Indonesia. Civil society groups are pushing for a Private Data Protection Law to be passed, but this will not be in place prior to April’s legislative and presidential elections, in which political candidates and parties are expected to use big data...

Some of the most pressing environmental problems in Indonesia today are plastic pollution and the consequences of large-scale land reclamation projects. In recent years, protests against these problems have increased in size and impact, especially on Bali, where the ubiquity of plastic garbage and a controversial reclamation project in Benoa Bay have galvanised a large and diverse protest movement...

With Indonesia's general elections less than three months away political campaigning and the push to win over voters is reaching high gear. Our guest this week is Ward Berenschot, co-author with Edward Aspinall, of a timely new book that takes a close look at the informal politics of elections and patronage democracy. Democracy for sale: Elections, Clientelism, and the State in Indonesia (Cornell...

Rice is Indonesia’s most important staple food, with consumption estimated at more than 100 kilograms per person per year, in a country of 270 million people. Although rice consumption is in long term decline, a common saying in Indonesia nevertheless holds, “if you haven’t eaten rice, you haven’t eaten”. How to provide such an immense quantity of rice to the population – whether through imports o...