#prabowo

In many ways, this episode is part of the incomplete security sector reform agenda that was first put forward during the Reformasi. During the Suharto years, the military operated under the doctrine of Dwifungsi (Dual Function), in which they operated in the defense and security tasks and sociopolitical tasks, which formed the backbone for Suharto’s authoritarian rule.

After Suharto fell in 1998, the country followed a process of Reformasi (Reforms). In the security sector, the Reformasi aimed to break that spine—it sought to remove the military from politics, separate it from the police, dismantle the territorial system, and revamp the military judicial system. The Reformasi, however, never fully dismantled the military’s institutional logic. The territorial command system remains intact, and military justice reform has stalled.[6]

When the country was hit by a series of terror attacks in the early 2000s, efforts to abolish the Army’s territorial system and reform the military judicial system quickly lost steam. The state found new roles for the Army’s old system in military operations other than war (MOOTW) such as in counter-terrorism and disaster relief.[7] Meanwhile, other programs such as the village-level Army civic action projects also remained part of the military’s repertoire in rural development, albeit in a much smaller scale.

Now, necessity is once again the watchword. The Reformasi-era security sector reform agenda, so the argument goes, left a long-term problem within its ranks—namely bottlenecks and logjams within the officer corps.[8] In order to solve these organizational problems, the TNI has long floated the idea of assigning its surplus officers to civilian positions in order to solve this problem—latest by former Armed Forces Chief of Staff Hadi Tjahjanto in 2019.[9] This organizational problem is also evident in the Indonesian National Police (Polri) in 2021.[10] Back then the idea was met with strong resistance from civil society activists, who warned then president Jokowi not to revive the Dwifungsi.[11]

In October 2023, the Jokowi administration passed Law No.20 on Civil Service (UU No.20 Tahun 2023 tentang Aparatur Sipil Negara), which ultimately allowed members of the military and police from taking up “non-managerial” positions in the bureaucracy.[12] Again, civil society activists protested this law, to no avail.[13]

Perhaps, interservice rivalry is also fueling the controversy. After the Reformasi, the Polri were separated from the military, and it quickly took over many roles of territorial or dual functions that had been previously dominated by the Army.[14] In September 2019, the daily Kompas pointed out to Jokowi administration’s trend in using active duty or retired Polri officers in non-security positions as “Dwifungsi Polri.”[15] In fact—in his short speech at the Army Training Facility in Baturaja, South Sumatra, Army Chief of Staff Maruli Simanjuntak also alluded to the unbridled spread of this “other institution.”[16]

To be fair, there are valid institutional and geopolitical reasons for the military’s role in non-military affairs, particularly in the spheres of disaster management, border management, and maritime security. Just like other countries, Indonesia’s disaster management and SAR agency, the BNPB and Basarnas, has always relied upon support from the military in times of crisis. Indonesia has also long suffered in the sphere of cybersecurity.[17] Further, a renewed attention to maritime security is of fundamental importance for Indonesia, as the country engages with China’s grey-zone tactics in the South China Sea, which lies north of its Natuna Islands.[18]

Indonesia’s evolving civil-military dynamics must also be understood within the broader context of a shifting global order. The collapse of the American-led liberal international system and the concurrent rise of powers like China and Russia—alongside the growing influence of the BRICS bloc, which Indonesia has just recently joined—have fostered an international environment that is increasingly permissive of illiberal governance. This geopolitical realignment not only emboldens leaders to challenge liberal democratic norms but also provides ideological and institutional models for centralized, security-driven governance.

Emerging Dynamics

The inauguration of Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka has garnered attention from experts who raised fears that Indonesia’s Reformasi agenda is falling apart in its seams as the country falls into further democratic backsliding.[19]

In 2025, the V-Dem Institute recently categorized Indonesia as an “electoral autocracy,” claiming that the country’s democracy is at the lowest since the beginning of the 21st century. [20] Others, however, are more optimistic, arguing that the country’s decentralized and fragmented democracy is actually keeping wannabe autocrats from exercising total control.[21]

Recent developments, however, show that, we are witnessing a deepening securitization of the state under Prabowo. This phenomenon is both a result of the incompleteness of the Reformasi era security sector reform agenda and a continuation of recent patterns incurred by the country’s previous administration under Joko Widodo (Jokowi).

As a former military man, Prabowo has a penchant for parades, drills, and uniforms, and he is not ashamed to show it to the world—or to those working for him. In what The Economist has called as a “bizarre initiation ritual,” he gathered his cabinet members—complete with Army fatigues and combat boots—for a retreat in the Military Academy at Magelang, Central Java. [22]

During this “ritual,” Prabowo constantly hemmed the importance of what he calls the “military way” of discipline and loyalty to the nation-state to his cabinet members. [23] He did the same thing with the four hundred and eighty newly-elected regional heads, including provincial governors, regents, and mayors from across the country.[24]

Prabowo is also more open to the use of military and police forces in his policies. To be fair, Jokowi’s administration was also marked by the extensive use of TNI and Polri members in his ministries—according to one report, there were 2,569 active-duty officers in various bureaucratic appointments during Jokowi’s tenure.[25]

But this trend only accelerated with Prabowo. Out of the 136 ministers, deputies, and agency heads in Prabowo’s cabinet, at least twenty-four are active and retired officers from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Police.[26] Since October 2024, mid-rank and flag officers have taken positions in various ministries, such as the Ministry of Transportation, Ministry of Agriculture, The Hajj Agency, and most recently, the State Logistics Agency.[27] Civil society activists have decried these as a deep violation of Law No.34 of 2004 on the TNI.[28]

Compared to its predecessor, Prabowo is also less shy in overtly mustering the military’s capacities to support his hallmark projects, such as the nationwide free food program (Makan Bergizi Gratis, MBG) and the Food Estate programs in Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Papua. The agency responsible for the free food program, the National Nutrition Agency, is dominated by retired military officers.[29] Meanwhile, many of its new cadres—projected to be 32,000-strong—are being trained in the Indonesian Defense University.[30]

TNI units are also directly participating in Prabowo’s hallmark projects. In support of the MBG, many of the Army’s territorial commands were deployed in overseeing and constructing the public kitchens for the program, such as in Southeast Sulawesi.[31] In supporting its food estate projects, the TNI is establishing 100 new “Territorial Development Battalions,” which will be equipped with company-sized units specializing in agriculture, fisheries, and animal husbandry.[32] Meanwhile, the TNI is also involved in a leading role in forestry management through the new Taskforce for Forestry.[33]

Most recently, Prabowo gathered two hundred mid-rank officers at his personal estate in Bogor, where they received training on economics, business, and finance from lecturers and professors at the University of Indonesia, Bandung Technological Institute, and Prasetya Mulya—an odd move that made the investigative weekly Tempo to suspect that they are being prepared to take positions in various state- and Ministry of Defense-owned enterprises. [34]

The military and police’s gradual reentry into non-security roles—a tenet once so central to Suharto’s New Order regime and was revived under Jokowi—is quickly gaining momentum under Prabowo. If these trends of centralization and securitization are kept unchecked, we are perhaps looking at further autocratization in the world’s third largest democracy.

Three Possible Futures?

Considering the current evidence, inherent structural forces, and emerging dynamics discussed above, there are three possible trajectories for the future of Indonesian civil-military relations under Prabowo, namely consolidation, escalation, or a rollback of  current trends.

In the first scenario—which is the consolidation of the current status quo, we are looking at a limited but continuous proliferation of active-duty military and police officers in the various civilian ministries and agencies, with exceptions provided by the president / government in areas deemed necessary for the administrations’ strategic programs. This means there will be continued appointment of active and retired military and police officers in non-security roles, such as in the bureaucracy. Meanwhile, there will be an expansion of military and police resources used for Prabowo’s hallmark projects, such as the free food and food estate programs in Kalimantan and Papua.

Shifting the problem into the civilian sphere only masks the officer logjam without addressing the structural deficiencies within the TNI and Polri officer corps. Securitization of governance solves short term administrative gaps but creates long-term vulnerabilities. Civilian agencies like Basarnas, Bakamla, and BNPB will grow dependent rather than capable. Indonesia will not get its own FEMA or Coast Guard so long as the military and the police continues to occupy the void. Nor will it build a robust cybersecurity regime if the digital domain is monitored by those trained for kinetic conflict.

Continued military and police domination in the fields of intelligence, cyber and cryptography, disaster management, search and rescue, border patrol, and maritime security will ultimately inhibit the growth of institutional professionalism in those domains. In the long run, this will not help Indonesia face its immediate security challenges in the cyber, disaster resilience, and maritime domains. Even the military’s own effectiveness erodes, as its core mission—external defense—is diluted by domestic affairs. Ultimately, the gradual yet persistent levels of securitization will affect the country’s sociopolitical condition, leading to further democratic backsliding. So far, this is the most likely scenario.

In comparative terms, this “soft consolidation” scenario echoes patterns seen in other countries, such as Turkey under Erdoğan—not because the military remains politically autonomous, but because security institutions became deeply embedded in governance. In Turkey, Erdoğan used the failed 2016 coup as a pretext to purge the armed forces and bring them further under executive control. Elections continue, but under conditions where security apparatuses have been absorbed into a centralized, illiberal executive.

The second scenario sees the escalation of military and police encroachment into nearly all aspects of governance—an acceleration of current trends into outright securitized rule. We will see an increased placement of active-duty and retired military and police officers in civilian positions, a heavy usage of military and police forces as a “reserve army” for governmental projects that are not directly related to military or security affairs—such as cultural or public information programs. This solves the military’s organizational problem of logjams as the military is allowed to allocate officers to civilian positions and to new units assigned to territorial or developmental tasks.

There will be strong civil society pushback in this scenario as the trauma of the New Order regime remains firmly planted in the minds of Indonesians. Perhaps we will also see an uptick in regional resistance and agrarian conflict in areas heavily impacted by the central government’s policies, such as in Papua, or possibly Northern Sumatra and Aceh.

Institution-wise, military professionalism is heavily impacted by the enmeshing of civil-military spheres, particularly in the six domains mentioned in the previous scenario. The TNI and Polri’s capacity and effectiveness as a fighting and policing force—and ultimately its capability to provide deterrence against external enemies or criminals—withers away as security agencies become agents of development. Most importantly, the democratic system will not survive this accelerated and rapid securitization of the state, thus leading to a higher degree of autocratization. This scenario is possible, but unlikely.

This more aggressive path of militarization would place Indonesia closer to post-2014 Thailand. Back then, the Thai military did not only staged a coup, but embedded itself in governance through constitutional engineering, bureaucratic appointments, and civilian repression. Though elections eventually resumed, they were tightly controlled, and democratic oversight never fully recovered. In a more extreme case of this pathway, Indonesia could become Myanmar, where democratic institutions served as a transitional façade for military retrenchment. The Tatmadaw tolerated civilian rule only so long as it did not threaten its prerogatives—until it seized power outright in 2021. While Indonesia’s political institutions and civil society are stronger and its public more mobilized, these examples show how quickly a security-led governance may become entrenched once the military’s civilian role is normalized and protected by law.

Rollback remains the least likely, yet most necessary path. The closest analogies are post-Pinochet Chile and late 1980s South Korea. This third scenario would require judicial checks, political will, legislative courage, and meaningful civic mobilization. It would mean not only repealing laws, but also substantially reforming the security institutions, dismantling territorial commands, and building civilian expertise from scratch. It would also require facing the truth: after Reformasi, Indonesia never truly ended its security-first mindset.

In this scenario the territorial system is dismantled and replaced with bases with forward-deployed troops in strategic bases. Improvements in civilian oversight would also allow the TNI to benefit from an influx of external expertise in talent management—thus allowing them to address its promotional logjam problems through revised promotional systems, accelerated retirements, and redirection of military officers to other institutions.

The gradual withdrawal of military and police professionals from foreign intelligence, cybersecurity, cryptography, disaster management, search and rescue, border management, and maritime security ultimately provides the opportunity for these institutions to build their own institutional culture and professionalism leading to increased effectiveness. Of course, they will maintain a close relationship with the military and police as supporting elements.

Additional measures could include stricter regulation of post-retirement appointments through mandatory waiting periods and further legislative reforms—such as on the law on the military judicial system, Polri, and others—that would limit military and police roles in non-security affairs. In this scenario, the government would be desecuritized and Indonesia could begin to restore its democratic principles that have eroded in recent years.

A democratic rollback of military and police influence—however remote—would require a path more akin to Chile in the 1990s or South Korea in the 1980s, where sustained public mobilization, elite negotiation, and international pressure converged to restore civilian supremacy. In both cases, rollback was not organic—it was engineered through plebiscites, constitutional amendments, civilian institution-building, and the slow erosion of securitized governance. If Indonesia is to pursue this path, it must first reckon with its unfinished Reformasi and confront the quiet normalization of security-first governance.

The recent controversy over the law is not merely another chapter of legal-bureaucratic debate. It is a symptom of the incompleteness of Indonesia’s security sector reforms that first began during the Reformasi years. By revising one of the last remaining symbols of Reformasi-era security sector reform, the current administration has opened the gates to military and police expansion once more. For civil society, one thing is clear: whether by drift or by design, the generals are back.

Norman Joshua Hoover Institution, Stanford University

Notes – 

[1] https://tirto.id/komnas-ham-tegaskan-revisi-uu-tni-minim-partisipasi-publik-g9E2

[2] The original bodies were : Coordinating Ministry for Political and Security Affairs, Defense, Presidential Military Secretary, State Intelligence, Cryptography Agency, National Resilience Institute, National Defense Council, National Search and Rescue, Narcotics Agency, and the Supreme Court. See https://www.tempo.co/politik/-hasil-revisi-uu-tni-tentara-aktif-akan-lebih-banyak-menduduki-lembaga-sipil-1220723

[3] https://www.tempo.co/politik/-hasil-revisi-uu-tni-tentara-aktif-akan-lebih-banyak-menduduki-lembaga-sipil-1220723

[4] https://www.thejakartapost.com/indonesia/2025/03/20/opposition-to-tni-law-revision-grows.html

[5] https://nasional.kompas.com/read/2025/03/18/05380321/pro-kontra-ruu-tni-yang-disebut-kembalikan-dwifungsi-abri-siapa-dukung-siapa

[6] Marcus Mietzner. Military Politics, Islam, and the State in Indonesia: From Turbulent Transition to Democratic Consolidation. Singapore: ISEAS. 2009.

[7] Muhamad Haripin. Civil Military Relations in Indonesia; The politics of military operations other than war. New York: Routledge. 2020.

[8] Laksmana, Evan A. 2019. “Reshuffling the Deck? Military Corporatism, Promotional Logjams and Post-Authoritarian Civil-Military Relations in Indonesia.” Journal of Contemporary Asia 49 (5): 806–36. doi:10.1080/00472336.2019.1613556.

[9] https://tirto.id/tni-masuk-kementerian-picu-konflik-kepentingan-dan-bikin-ruwet-dfJh

[10] https://www.cnnindonesia.com/nasional/20210126004845-12-598311/ipw-soroti-polri-bengkak-jenderal-banyak-yang-menganggur

[11] https://tirto.id/wacana-perwira-tni-isi-pos-sipil-jokowi-jangan-hidupkan-dwifungsi-df8H

[12] https://www.tempo.co/politik/begini-bunyi-pasal-dalam-uu-asn-soal-polri-dan-tni-boleh-mengisi-jabatan-aparatur-sipil-negara-135146

[13] https://nasional.kompas.com/read/2023/10/06/15585321/kontras-kecam-revisi-uu-asn-karena-tni-polri-tetap-bisa-jadi-asn

[14] Muradi. Politics and Governance in Indonesia: The Police in the Era of Reformasi. New York: Routledge. 2014. 74.

[15] https://www.kompas.com/tren/read/2019/09/18/060300165/dwifungsi-polri-1-eranya-polisi-mengurus-kpk-beras-hingga-diplomasi?page=all

[16] Kompas TV. March 12, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8NLBqZAe2M Watch from minute 2:50-3:10.

[17] https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Indonesia-s-cyber-vulnerability-is-a-wake-up-call-for-Indo-Pacific

[18] Arif, Muhamad, Arie Afriansyah, Tangguh Chairil, and Gita Ardi Lestari. “Grey Zone Conflict in the South China Sea: The Challenges for Indonesian Maritime Security Governance.” Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International and Strategic Affairs 46, no. 3 (2024): 407-434. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/949720.

[19] Paul Marshall, “Will Prabowo’s Election End Indonesia’s Era Reformasi?,” The Diplomat, October 7, 2024, https://thediplomat.com/2024/10/will-prabowos-election-end-indonesias-era-reformasi/.

[20] Nord, Marina, David Altman, Fabio Angiolillo, Tiago Fernandes, Ana Good God, and Staffan I. Lindberg. 2025. Democracy Report 2025: 25 Years of Autocratization-Democracy Trumped? University of Gothenburg: V-Dem Institute. https://www.v-dem.net/documents/60/V-dem-dr__2025_lowres.pdf

[21] Ben Bland, “Indonesia’s Democracy Is Stronger Than a Strongman,” Foreign Affairs, February 13, 2024.

[22] “Yes Sir: A Bizarre Initiation Ritual for Indonesia’s Cabinet,” The Economist, October 31, 2024, https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/10/31/yes-sir-a-bizarre-initiation-ritual-for-indonesias-cabinet.

[23] Achmad Ibrahim and Edna Tarigan, “Indonesia’s New President and Ministers Begin a Military-Style Retreat Which Includes Morning Drills,” AP, accessed November 17, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/indonesia-prabowo-subianto-military-retreat-af8cec0a57ba334a1f39912e89d1609a.

[24] https://www.tempo.co/politik/sederet-fakta-retret-kepala-daerah-dari-biaya-pakai-apbn-hingga-pemilik-pt-lembah-tidar-1207374

[25] Mis Fransiska Dewi, “Di Era Jokowi, Ada 2.569 Perwira TNI Duduki Jabatan Sipil,” Bloomberg Technoz, October 9, 2024, https://www.bloombergtechnoz.com/detail-news/51195/di-era-jokowi-ada-2-569-perwira-tni-duduki-jabatan-sipil.

[26] Adhi Priamarizki and Muhamad Haripin, “A Most Militarised Cabinet,” New Mandala, November 13, 2024, https://www.newmandala.org/a-most-militarised-cabinet/.

[27] https://www.tempo.co/ekonomi/sederet-perwira-tni-aktif-yang-duduki-jabatan-sipil-di-kementerian-dan-bumn-1222235

[28] https://www.thejakartapost.com/indonesia/2025/02/11/army-generals-new-role-in-bulog-causes-concern.html

[29] https://www.tempo.co/politik/dadan-hindayana-ungkap-alasan-struktur-badan-gizi-nasional-didominasi-purnawirawan-tni-1162246

[30] https://www.thejakartapost.com/indonesia/2025/02/19/bgn-trains-thousands-to-accelerate-free-nutritious-meal-program.html

[31] https://www.antaranews.com/berita/4704089/pangdam-dapur-sehat-mbg-di-kendari-telah-sesuai-standar#google_vignette

[32] https://nasional.kompas.com/read/2025/02/05/15023781/tni-ad-tambah-personel-untuk-100-batalyon-teritorial-pembangunan

[33] https://jabar.antaranews.com/rilis-pers/4703101/peran-tni-dan-satgas-pkh-atasi-kebun-sawit-ilegal