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Prabowo wants to 'make Indonesia great again'
Sydney Morning Herald - October 20, 2018
And it seems Indonesian presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto, the man who lost the 2014 presidential election to Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, has decided to inject some Trump-like rhetoric in a bid to turn the tables and claim victory in the April 2019 election.
Just don't accuse him of copying the US president. In a speech last week to the Lembaga Dakwah Islam Indonesia – the Indonesia Islamic Preaching Institute, in Jakarta – Prabowo reflected on how President Trump had declared a trade war on China and promised to make America great again" with his America first policies.
"Why are the Indonesian people afraid to say 'Indonesia first, make Indonesia great again?' Why there are no Indonesian leaders daring to say the important thing is jobs for Indonesian people?"
The rise of strong man nationalist populist candidates like Trump and Prabowo is a phenomenon taking place around the world.
Prabowo's borrowed line drew strong applause and was very much in keeping with his positioning as a nationalist, outsider candidate who will stand up for his country (much like Trump) against the elite and for ordinary Indonesians.
In a campaign speech in Bali on Friday, Prabowo railed against the fact that so-much of Indonesia's wealth belongs to the one per cent while 99 per cent of citizens don't have enough.
While his point about unfair wealth distribution is correct, it does jar somewhat coming from a man who, like Trump, is part of his country's economic and political elite (Prabowo is a wealthy former army general who was once married to the daughter of long-time president Suharto).
The candidate has already drawn comparisons with Trump, too. Back in March, Australian National University Indonesia expert Dr Marcus Mietzner told Fairfax Media that Prabowo was a Trump-like figure: "impulsive, populist, erratic and with authoritarian tendencies".
The comment drew an angry response from Prabowo's campaign team at the time. And – if you can believe it – the man himself insists he is not borrowing his lines from Trump.
"No. [I am] not copying, who told you to ask that?" he rebuked an Indonesian journalist when asked about the Trump line last week. "So, it's like this. I said that why are other nations allowed to say 'make America great again', why can't we?"
At a briefing for foreign media on Friday, Hashim Djojohadikusumo, the candidate's younger brother and director of media and communications for the campaign, pointed out that for example, French President Emmanuel Macron had used the phrase "make the planet great again".
Irawan Ronodipuro, the campaign team's director of foreign affairs, went further. The country's national anthem, Indonesia Raya, means "Great Indonesia" and the name of Prabowo's political party, Gerindra, was short for "Great Indonesia Movement". "It's a movement making Indonesia great. I think, on the contrary, Donald Trump emulated us."
While "make Indonesia great again" may well resonate with ordinary Indonesians, Prabowo and his campaign team would do well to stop denying the bleedingly obvious source of their catch cry.
Maybe then they would have a chance, to paraphrase another Trumpism, of "winning so much they'll get tired of winning".
Source: https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/prabowo-wants-to-make-indonesia-great-again-20181020-p50awr.html.
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