Prabowo Subianto, elected President of Indonesia in last week’s election by a nearly 60% majority (assuring an outright victory without a runoff), after serving as Defense Minister in the closing term of Joko Widodo’s presidency, is not welcomed in the halls of the “rules-based order” of the U.S./U.K. imperial lords. Prabowo ran on a promise to continue Jokowi’s policies, both the independence of the nation from the superpowers and the cooperation with China on major infrastructure development projects, but he is not “trusted” to live up to that promise by the would-be rulers of the universe in London and Washington.
Chatham House expressed the British Empire’s view in a Feb. 15 column by Ben Bland, the Director of their Asia-Pacific Program, who writes: “Prabowo has previously railed against the unnecessary expense and complexity of Indonesian democracy, and many rights activists worry about what he might do when he inherits the system.... A clever tactician who has been working toward the presidency for at least two decades, Prabowo capitalized on Indonesians’ desire to see a continuation of Jokowi’s policies—and Jokowi’s desire to maintain influence once he steps down. But, when he gets his hands on the levers of power, Prabowo will want to set his own agenda.”
Prabowo was widely attacked as a militarist and a human rights violator during the Suharto years. He ran losing campaigns for President against Jokowi, in both previous elections, but Jokowi appointed him Defense Minister in his last term and the political opponents became allies.
Ong Tee Keat, a former Malaysian Cabinet Minister and a political analyst as well as the President of the Belt and Road Initiative Caucus for Asia Pacific (BRICAP) and a friend of Hussein Askary, published an article last month reviewing the color revolutions and related crimes of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and other CIA-related organizations, which warned that the NED was deeply involved in Indonesian politics, aiming against Prabowo. He wrote on Jan. 27: “Indonesia is certainly not the single target, as the NED is known to have its operatives in over 100 countries with lavish fund disbursements in excess of 2,000 grants every year by its own reckoning. In the run-up to election in Indonesia soon, these sums were said to have helped extend the NED’s tentacles into various NGOs, civil society groups and most crucially, opposition parties and candidates across the political spectrum in the country.”
He continues: “Electoral grooming and training of individuals were provided alongside staging of mass protest should electoral outcome run contrary to the preset aspirations of the NED.... [T]he skulduggery cloaked in the outfit of ‘advancing democracy’ that is now rearing its ugly head in the Southeast Asian Republic—the largest economy in ASEAN that has been pursuing a relatively independent diplomacy amid the rising Sino-U.S. rivalry in Asia Pacific. Conceivably, this does not align well with the security interests of Washington. To veer the regional bloc from its present China-centric economic orbit, notably under the framework of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is not as simple as a walk in the park. Driven by such a stratagem in mind, the best bet ever is none other than installing a pliant government in the target nations.”
We will see how the Anglo-Americans act now that Prabowo has won.
