‘We seem to be going nowhere’: Indonesian president is losing his people

Muktita Suhartono

November 12, 2026 — 4:53pm

Jakarta, Indonesia: After more than four months of living under the shroud of wildfire haze in Indonesian Borneo and keeping his young sons indoors, Kurniawan rues voting for President Prabowo Subianto.

Far to the west, on the island of Sumatra, Rama has the same regret. He has developed chest pain and breathing difficulties due to the bad air.

Prabowo’s government has struggled to contain the wildfires – which are being fuelled by El Nino and human activity like slash-and-burn farming – and are among the worst on record in Indonesia. And his administration has refused to declare them a national disaster, a label that would ease the entry of foreign aid.

“The situation has gotten so severe – yet instead of empathy, the government is turning a blind eye to our suffering,” said Rama, who, like other voters interviewed for this article, asked to be identified only by part of his name to speak freely about the country’s leader.

The haze has spread hundreds of kilometres across national borders to Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines, raising fears of a regional health crisis. And for millions of Indonesians, particularly in Borneo and Sumatra, it has compounded cost-of-living woes by making fresh air a luxury.

This is not what voters like Rama and Kurniawan had expected. They had believed that Prabowo, a feared former general with a dark past, had the discipline to secure Indonesia’s economic future and the will to deal with endemic problems like wildfires.

“We had high hopes that his government would operate efficiently under one command,” said Kurniawan, 35, who lives in Central Kalimantan province. “I am very, very disappointed.”

Disenchantment among Prabowo’s base has caused his approval rating to collapse. One survey said it dropped from 81.2 per cent in November 2025 to 44.5 per cent last month, a shockingly low level in a country where people typically do not criticise their leader in public.

Another poll found that three-fourths of Indonesians felt stressed by government policies, citing high prices and a lack of job opportunities as their main concerns.

The level of dissatisfaction is a reminder of the discontent that brought down the dictator Suharto, Prabowo’s former father-in-law, three decades ago.

The military past that attracted some voters to Prabowo also turned many off. He was a feared commander of the Kopassus special forces during Indonesia’s brutal occupation of East Timor. In 1998, he was discharged from the military for his involvement in the abduction and torture of pro-democracy activists under Suharto’s regime. For years, he was barred from entering the United States.

In the 2024 presidential election, he cast himself as the candidate of continuity, pledging to continue the policies and welfare projects of his predecessor, Joko Widodo, under whom many Indonesians prospered.

Prabowo’s victory raised fears that Indonesia was regressing to its authoritarian past.

Those fears have been borne out, his critics say, because his administration represents significant executive overreach. He has sought to tighten the state’s grip on the economy – trying to centralise Indonesia’s commodity exports, for instance – expanded the military’s power, prosecuted critics, and detained hundreds of protesters.

Prabowo has rammed through populist policies that have been criticised as boondoggles, including a free meal program that sickened thousands of children. Meanwhile, the cost of living and youth unemployment remain persistently high.

MSCI, an influential financial firm, has raised alarms about structural issues in the economy, saying that it is considering labelling Indonesia unsafe for investment. Stocks and the Indonesian rupiah plunged this year.

“Despite having a demographic bonus, abundant natural resources and the potential for progress, we seem to be going nowhere,” said Achmad Nur Hidayat, an economics lecturer at University of Pembangunan Nasional Veteran Jakarta. “Our development is driven not by rationality, but by political consolidation.”

Prabowo has also been dogged by accusations of cronyism, with major national projects frequently awarded to political allies and oligarchs, including his brother, Hashim Djojohadikusumo. The president has denied those claims.

Dissatisfaction with Prabowo has spilled onto the streets, with his populist economic policies and their enormous price tags raising widespread alarm about the future of Indonesia. In recent weeks, protesters have rallied under the hashtag #indonesiasadar or “Wake Up, Indonesia,” and raised the three-finger salute – a symbol of resistance adopted from The Hunger Games.

Prabowo remains defiant.

“Our country continues to face all sorts of disturbances, for instance, the actions of MSCI. They are trying to intimidate us. We keep being obstructed, right?” he said last month during a speech in Jakarta.

“The Indonesian nation fears no one and will not flinch. Furthermore, if necessary, we will implement large-scale austerity measures.”

Gunawan, 61, a Jakarta resident, said he voted for Prabowo because of his links to Widodo, the former leader. Now Gunawan feels “cheated” and partly to blame for the fallout.

“We did wrong, that’s why we have to speak up, voice our regrets,” he said. “What we are seeing now is a regime with no vision other than enriching its own circle and the oligarchs.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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