Natalie Sambhi-Militarising Indonesia

Thanks so much, Shakir.

In your work, you've argued that the roots of Indonesia's remilitarisation lie in Jokowi's pragmatic approach to democratic civil military relations.

You talk about military leaders were allowed to reassert themselves in defence and wider governance.

through the kind of proliferation of military generals in public life and the militarisation of civil life through programs like Bela Nagara.

Now, under Prabowo, we've also seen this kind of changes or shifts in the civil-military relations, arguably in a wider and more dramatic way.

These include the 2025 TNI law that expanded the domestic role of TNI in governance to the restoration of the military as an agent of development in Papuan food estates and, for instance, the nutritious lunch program.

As a scholar of civil military relations in Indonesia, what are you watching most keenly under the Prabowo government to measure shifts in civil military relations?

There are two areas I think we should look at.

One is remilitarization and the other is militarization.

So to understand both terms, remilitarization is about moving officers back in institutions where they've withdrawn from, which we would have seen during the reformacy era.

to some degree.

Militarization, I think, is about the infusion of a military way, a logic, even language that's sort of spreading into civilian life.

I think Jokowi gave us both of those things, and they've accelerated and intensified under Prabowo.

Under Prabowo, I have my eye on many things, but among them three main things.

You alluded to legal changes to the structure of civil military relations in Indonesia.

So amendments to the law 34 of 2004.

The second one is the militarization in other areas of civilian life, particularly cabinets and other things.

And the last one is the new generation of TNI officers.

So I'll take each of those really quickly.

The legal changes have thrown up a lot of significant changes for civil military relations in Indonesia, particularly Article 7, which expands the number of agencies where active duty military officers can have posts.

And so while they're not unusual for where we might expect military officers, the understanding is that they're middle ranking officers that are going in and taking managerial positions.

And there are implications of that, in particular about potential shifts in bureaucratic culture.

We're talking about the military, which is a very hierarchical, very conservative institution where there's not a lot of questioning of orders.

And if you're having that transposed into a public service context, what might the changes be? Particularly if you have this culture in Indonesia where asal babak senang, which we know is about keeping the boss happy.

are we going to find bad news traveling upward? And we have seen evidence of challenges where military, particularly the army, has been running certain programs where there have been problems, particularly in the free nutritious meals program and poisoning of children.