With Indonesia drifting in the global tide of illiberal politics and the Australian media drawn to the bad-news stories stemming from this, the rhetorical scaffolding of the bilateral relationship needs refreshing.
The calendar will tell you that Indonesia’s presidential election is due in February 2024 – but South-East Asia’s biggest democracy is firmly in election season already.
The November summit in Bali capped a G20 whose outcomes greatly exceeded expectations in a year in which its membership was divided on big issues, notably over the Russian invasion of Ukraine., the latest milestone along the road to illiberalisation of Indonesian politics that gained momentum during the Jokowi years.
A post-Jokowi reversal of regressive political trends doesn’t seem likely either. Barring any radical constitutional change ahead of 2024, Indonesia will remain a democracy, albeit a weaker and more illiberal one, where dissent is anathematised and the rights of unpopular minorities, such as LGBT people, are subject to the whims of the majority.The new criminal code introduces added risks for LGBT Indonesians, for example, but contains no explicit ban on same-sex relations.
By contrast, after the end of the Suharto era, the idea of shared democratic values as a buttress of relations with Indonesia has been a relatively easy sell, especially once the election of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2004 capped Indonesia’s democratic transition and confirmed the viability of moderate, technocratic politics.But as Indonesia’s democracy displays its more illiberal face, the rhetoric of shared democratic values is a declining currency.
Australia is notable among its liberal-democratic political brethren in the extent to which it finds a compelling congruence of economic and strategic interests – in an open, rules-based trading system and avoiding the entrenchment of a Cold War dynamic in Asia – among the largely undemocratic states in our immediate region.
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