Hybrid Authoritarian
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Population
HRF classifies Indonesia as ruled by a hybrid authoritarian regime.
Between 1966 and 1998, Indonesia was under a dictatorship led by General Suharto. His resignation led to a democratic transition known as the “Reformasi” era, which restored direct presidential elections, enhanced human rights protections, and decentralized government powers. However, twenty-five years later, Indonesia is reverting towards authoritarianism. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo (2014-2024) repeatedly used public funds to tilt the electoral playing field, enacted stringent laws to curb criticism, and interfered with oversight bodies. In 2024, Prabowo Subianto, Suharto’s former son-in-law, won the presidency in a landslide, running on the same ticket as Jokowi’s eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka. Their victory is controversial due to Prabowo’s past involvement in human rights abuses during Suharto’s regime in East Timor and West Papua, as well as indications that President Jokowi abused state resources to shore up support for them. Meanwhile, West Papua remains a conflict-ridden region, with the separatist Free Papua Movement waging a decades-long armed resistance against Indonesia’s central government in pursuit of independence.
National elections are largely free and fair. Candidates and political parties are free to organize their campaigns, and mainstream media outlets offer balanced coverage. However, election periods are marked by increasing online disinformation and smear campaigns targeting both the incumbent and opposition sides. Jokowi’s government has also faced accusations of misusing public funds to boost his own and Prabowo-Gibran’s campaigns as well as of influencing electoral oversight by appointing loyal members to key supervisory positions.
Civil society leaders and members of the general public are seriously and unfairly hindered in their ability to openly criticize or challenge the regime. State-backed repression has increased since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, with cases of police brutality, unlawful killings, and enforced disappearances on the rise, while stringent laws have targeted minority groups. The regime has also increased its presence in the online space by means of censorship, surveillance systems, and internet shutdowns.
Institutions are somewhat independent but frequently constrained by the regime. Courts have enabled the regime’s attempts to tilt the electoral process in favor of the incumbent as well as to retaliate against critics in high-stakes cases, including dissenting judges. Officials implicated in grand corruption cases have largely escaped accountability. Top courts and other oversight bodies have suffered from a series of attacks by the regime, leading to a substantial erosion of their independence and operational effectiveness. A weakened parliamentary opposition has further reduced institutional constraints on the executive, while the regime has simultaneously expanded the role of the military within civilian government.
National elections in Indonesia are largely free and fair. Candidates and political parties are free to organize their campaigns, and mainstream media outlets offer balanced coverage. However, election periods have seen a rise in online disinformation and smear campaigns targeting both regime and opposition candidates. The regime has also faced accusations of misusing public funds to boost electoral gains and meddling with electoral oversight bodies.
The regime has not unfairly and significantly hindered a real, mainstream opposition party or candidate’s electoral campaign. Mainstream candidates are free to run their campaigns and join televised public debates ahead of elections. However, instances of political intimidation and increasing disinformation online raise concerns over electoral fairness. In the 2024 elections, nine TV channels were randomly selected by the General Elections Commission (KPU) to broadcast debates between opposing presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Although some have raised concerns of potential bias among outlets, partisan media coverage has not significantly skewed the playing field in favor of the regime. However, these elections experienced systematic attempts by the incumbent to give an advantage to the Prabowo-Gibran pair over their opponents through the deployment of local officials and several visits by Jokowi in communities around Central Java and Yogyakarta to shore up their campaign. Smear campaigns and online disinformation through weaponized cyber trolls – known locally as “buzzers” – have been on the rise for the past three election cycles, targeting even the incumbent. This was evident when, in 2019, false allegations emerged linking President Jokowi to Chinese financiers and accusing him of being hostile to the Muslim community in Indonesia.
Candidates close to the incumbent enjoyed significant and unfair campaign advantages that seriously undermined the real, mainstream opposition’s ability to compete. Jokowi’s government has engaged in public funds abuse in the form of vote buying and pork barreling (the allocation of government money to localized projects to boost political support). Critics pointed to a series of financial incentives by the incumbent to boost support for the Prabowo-Gibran ticket ahead of elections – including an 8% wage raise for civil servants and the allocation of around IDR 500 trillion (approximately $31 billion at that time) to social assistance programs (“bansos”), targeting especially swing constituencies. Concerns about incumbent advantage were already present in the run-up to the 2019 elections, where Jokowi employed similar tactics to garner support for his own ticket among regional officeholders and veterans.
Finally, independent electoral oversight has also been seriously undermined by the executive. The executive has increased its influence over the country’s main electoral management bodies; however, external observers have substantially contributed to the oversight process during elections. In 2021, Jokowi exceeded legal limits by appointing four government-affiliated individuals to the vetting team for KPU and Bawaslu, the General Elections Supervisory Agency tasked with overseeing the administration of general elections, ahead of nominations scheduled that year. Yet, challenges from electoral watchdogs and the Anies-Amin camp accusing Jokowi of meddling with the electoral process failed to convince the Constitutional Court. Other institutions and civil society actors have remained active in this regard, however. In February 2024, the Honorary Council of Election Management Bodies (DKPP) found all KPU commissioners to have committed an ethical violation by accepting Gibran Rakabuming Raka’s candidacy, leading to the removal of Chief Commissioner Hasyim Asy’ari. Grassroots initiatives like Kawal Pemilu and Jaga Pemilu have also strengthened oversight since 2014, though deterrence against electoral misconduct remains weak.
Civil society leaders and members of the general public are seriously and unfairly hindered in their ability to openly criticize or challenge the regime. State repression has increased since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, with cases of police brutality, unlawful killings, and enforced disappearances on the rise, while draconian laws have targeted dissenting voices from marginalized groups, such as Papuan and LGBTQ+ communities. The regime has also increased its presence in the online space by means of censorship, surveillance, and internet shutdowns.
Protests have been seriously and unfairly repressed. Instances of police brutality, torture, and cyber-patrol operations have been recorded, with repression intensifying since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Authorities deploy police and military to halt demonstrators, often using excessive force, as seen in the recent nationwide anti-government protests that spanned the end of August until early September 2025, when peaceful protesters opposing new housing allowances for lawmakers were met with tear gas, rubber bullets, and mass arrests. During these protests, the police unlawfully killed at least eight civilians and allegedly forcibly disappeared around 20 people. Similarly, during the 2020 protests against the Job Creation Law, rights groups documented around 400 cases of police brutality, 6,000 arrests, and coordinated cyber-patrol operations to spread pro-government narratives online. In the conflict-prone region of Papua, the police have been reported to use torture as a means of curbing separatist movements’ activism.
Dissidents have been systematically subjected to arbitrary and unlawful killings. In the Papua region, pervasive police brutality has targeted separatist groups for more than 15 years. Between December 2023 and November 2024, state security forces were reportedly responsible for 45 cases of extrajudicial killings. While many of these incidents occurred in the context of counterinsurgency operations, the Indonesian police and military have also violently intervened in peaceful pro-independence events and religious gatherings, killing around 100 people between 2010 and 2018.
The regime has also seriously and unfairly censored dissenting speech. This has included social media bans and increased surveillance systems. Since 2014, state-sponsored blanket bans have been targeting a series of popular websites that are usually used by government critics to express grievances about the regime, such as Vimeo, Imgur, and Reddit, on the grounds that these platforms were harboring pornographic/explicit content prohibited under the 2008 Pornography Act. Between 2020 and 2021, the Ministry of Communication and Informatics (now Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs) issued regulations that further tightened control by requiring mandatory registration of “electronic system providers,” including major social media platforms and search engines, and subjecting them to stringent data disclosure obligations. In 2025, the government suspended TikTok’s local operating license for its refusal to share data linked to the August/September protests. The license was reinstated in October after the company complied with the government’s demand.
Finally, the regime has systematically and disproportionately undermined marginalized groups’ ability to dissent, employing both active repression and digital censorship mechanisms to curb criticism of the government. In Papua, where indigenous people face overt discrimination based on their ethnic origin, security forces have targeted activists and organizations in an effort to suppress the region’s separatist aspirations. In 2019, a military attack on a university student dormitory in Surabaya prompted a series of peaceful protests the following year across 33 cities under the “Papuan Lives Matter” banner. Despite this, both the Jokowi and Prabowo governments have continued to deploy security forces to quell Papuan activism, leading to 370 arrests throughout 2024 and an additional 125 as of June 2025. Across Indonesia, legislation has facilitated online censorship and offline repression against LGBTQ+ activists and groups as well. Under the Electronic Information and Transactions (UU ITE) and Pornography Laws, Prabowo’s government has intensified state control over online spaces by blocking LGBTQ-related websites and applications deemed to have a “negative effect” on citizens, and by using surveillance systems to identify and compile databases of LGBTQ+ activists. Moreover, discriminatory police raids on private and public gatherings have led to the arrest of participants found in breach of the pornography law.
Institutions are somewhat independent but frequently constrained by the regime. Courts have enabled the regime’s attempts to tilt the electoral process in favor of the incumbent. New laws compel the judiciary to align with government interests through its rulings and extend legislative and executive influence over key oversight bodies. Finally, the Indonesian political landscape is marred by weak opposition and a preference to build big-tent coalitions that involve absorbing political rivals into the government, thereby undermining checks and balances. The regime has also strengthened the military’s role in civilian governance.
Courts have frequently and unfairly enabled the regime’s attempts to significantly undermine electoral competition and made the electoral process significantly skewed in its favor. This included tilting electoral rules to accommodate incumbent-aligned candidates. In 2023, the Constitutional Court paved the way for Jokowi’s 36-year-old son and former mayor of Surakarta, Gibran Rakabuming, to contest the vice presidency the following year by adding a special exemption to the minimum age requirement of 40, allowing candidates who had previously held regional office to run. Nonetheless, the Court has demonstrated some commitment to electoral fairness through its 2024 and 2025 decisions to review the parliamentary minimum threshold, which is currently set at 4% and criticized for disadvantaging smaller parties, and to lower nomination requirements for presidential and vice-presidential candidates.
Through a series of reforms, the regime has systematically and seriously weakened the independence and operational effectiveness of judicial institutions. The government and parliament have collaborated to pass legislation that makes judges more compliant with regime preferences by adding new procedures of dismissal and changing judges’ term limits. The Constitutional Court – which is empowered to review the most politically salient cases, including election disputes and constitutionality of laws – has frequently suffered from political meddling in its functioning. Judges to the Court are appointed jointly by the President, the House of Representatives (DPR), and the Supreme Court, a mechanism that compromises the Court’s statutory independence from other branches of government. The Court’s constituent law, originally passed in 2003, has been amended a total of three times by 2020. Each amendment has altered the term limits of Constitutional Court judges and their age requirements, as well as the Court’s oversight, and passed with limited to no public consultations. The Constitutional Court has also been notably reluctant to review these amendments both in substance and procedurally. Until 2020, for example, the Court received a total of 44 procedural challenges to the Constitutional Court Law, all of which were dismissed. In May 2024, the House of Representatives (DPR) proposed a fourth amendment to the Law, which would require sitting Constitutional Court judges to secure the joint approval of the President, DPR, and Supreme Court to renew their tenure every five years. The proposed amendment would also empower the three institutions to extend judges’ tenure beyond the current limit of 10 years at will. The Supreme Court is similarly prone to political interference. On February 4, 2025, the DPR rushed a revision to its Rules of Procedure that vests it with the power to conduct periodical evaluations of all public officials it appoints – including Supreme Court and Constitutional Court judges – and make binding recommendations for their dismissal. This change has been met with firm denunciation domestically.
The regime has seriously weakened the independence and operational effectiveness of oversight institutions. In the past 10 years, a series of legislative proposals have extended executive and legislative control over supervisory bodies by making their leadership conditional on parliamentary approval and restricting their investigative powers. In 2025, the revision of the above-mentioned DPR Rules of Procedures expanded the House’s power in terms of evaluation and dismissal of the leadership of other supervisory bodies, such as the KPK, the KPU, and Bawaslu. In 2019, parliament worked alongside the government to place the KPK under further executive control by introducing a new supervisory board and limiting investigation timeframes.
Finally, legislative institutions have also been seriously undermined in their effectiveness. Since winning the 2024 election, President Prabowo has often voiced his desire to absorb all parties in parliament into the government, and he was ultimately successful in doing so. As of December 2025, Prabowo has secured control of two-thirds of the DPR by obtaining the backing of seven out of eight parties represented in the legislature. The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) was initially projected to be the sole opposition party, but abandoned its position and has now claimed to be neither in the opposition nor in the government, and instead refers to itself as a “balancing party”. The result is a broad ruling coalition with little to no counterbalance, a recurrent phenomenon during post-election periods in Indonesia as winning candidates rapidly realign with the president-elect to secure top ministerial positions and other material benefits. Prabowo’s cabinet is emblematic of the pervasiveness of patronage and nepotism in Indonesian politics. Upon assuming office, Prabowo introduced 23 new ministerial portfolios without clear justifications. It is the largest cabinet since 1966, comprising around 100 individuals across ministries and government agencies, many of whom are known Prabowo loyalists. They include Minister of Defense Sjafrie Shamsoeddin, a former classmate of Prabowo’s who has remained close friends with him, and Cabinet Secretary Teddy Indra Wijaya, Prabowo’s personal aide who is also an active military officer.
The regime has extended military influence over civilian governance. In March 2025, Prabowo ratified an amendment to the 2004 National Armed Forces Act (UU TNI), following unanimous approval by parliament. Previously, serving military officers could assume civilian roles only in sectors related to security, such as the defense ministry and the state intelligence agency. The revision has significantly broadened this scope, allowing active-duty officers to occupy a wider range of government posts, including the attorney general’s office and the state secretariat, as exemplified by the appointment of Teddy Indra Wijaya. Civil society organizations (CSOs) contended that this change risks undermining the professionalism of the armed forces as well as restoring the military’s active participation in governance by ensuring greater veto powers in policy-making.
HRF classifies Indonesia as ruled by a hybrid authoritarian regime.
Between 1966 and 1998, Indonesia was under a dictatorship led by General Suharto. His resignation led to a democratic transition known as the “Reformasi” era, which restored direct presidential elections, enhanced human rights protections, and decentralized government powers. However, twenty-five years later, Indonesia is reverting towards authoritarianism. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo (2014-2024) repeatedly used public funds to tilt the electoral playing field, enacted stringent laws to curb criticism, and interfered with oversight bodies. In 2024, Prabowo Subianto, Suharto’s former son-in-law, won the presidency in a landslide, running on the same ticket as Jokowi’s eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka. Their victory is controversial due to Prabowo’s past involvement in human rights abuses during Suharto’s regime in East Timor and West Papua, as well as indications that President Jokowi abused state resources to shore up support for them. Meanwhile, West Papua remains a conflict-ridden region, with the separatist Free Papua Movement waging a decades-long armed resistance against Indonesia’s central government in pursuit of independence.
National elections are largely free and fair. Candidates and political parties are free to organize their campaigns, and mainstream media outlets offer balanced coverage. However, election periods are marked by increasing online disinformation and smear campaigns targeting both the incumbent and opposition sides. Jokowi’s government has also faced accusations of misusing public funds to boost his own and Prabowo-Gibran’s campaigns as well as of influencing electoral oversight by appointing loyal members to key supervisory positions.
Civil society leaders and members of the general public are seriously and unfairly hindered in their ability to openly criticize or challenge the regime. State-backed repression has increased since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, with cases of police brutality, unlawful killings, and enforced disappearances on the rise, while stringent laws have targeted minority groups. The regime has also increased its presence in the online space by means of censorship, surveillance systems, and internet shutdowns.
Institutions are somewhat independent but frequently constrained by the regime. Courts have enabled the regime’s attempts to tilt the electoral process in favor of the incumbent as well as to retaliate against critics in high-stakes cases, including dissenting judges. Officials implicated in grand corruption cases have largely escaped accountability. Top courts and other oversight bodies have suffered from a series of attacks by the regime, leading to a substantial erosion of their independence and operational effectiveness. A weakened parliamentary opposition has further reduced institutional constraints on the executive, while the regime has simultaneously expanded the role of the military within civilian government.
National elections in Indonesia are largely free and fair. Candidates and political parties are free to organize their campaigns, and mainstream media outlets offer balanced coverage. However, election periods have seen a rise in online disinformation and smear campaigns targeting both regime and opposition candidates. The regime has also faced accusations of misusing public funds to boost electoral gains and meddling with electoral oversight bodies.
The regime has not unfairly and significantly hindered a real, mainstream opposition party or candidate’s electoral campaign. Mainstream candidates are free to run their campaigns and join televised public debates ahead of elections. However, instances of political intimidation and increasing disinformation online raise concerns over electoral fairness. In the 2024 elections, nine TV channels were randomly selected by the General Elections Commission (KPU) to broadcast debates between opposing presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Although some have raised concerns of potential bias among outlets, partisan media coverage has not significantly skewed the playing field in favor of the regime. However, these elections experienced systematic attempts by the incumbent to give an advantage to the Prabowo-Gibran pair over their opponents through the deployment of local officials and several visits by Jokowi in communities around Central Java and Yogyakarta to shore up their campaign. Smear campaigns and online disinformation through weaponized cyber trolls – known locally as “buzzers” – have been on the rise for the past three election cycles, targeting even the incumbent. This was evident when, in 2019, false allegations emerged linking President Jokowi to Chinese financiers and accusing him of being hostile to the Muslim community in Indonesia.
Candidates close to the incumbent enjoyed significant and unfair campaign advantages that seriously undermined the real, mainstream opposition’s ability to compete. Jokowi’s government has engaged in public funds abuse in the form of vote buying and pork barreling (the allocation of government money to localized projects to boost political support). Critics pointed to a series of financial incentives by the incumbent to boost support for the Prabowo-Gibran ticket ahead of elections – including an 8% wage raise for civil servants and the allocation of around IDR 500 trillion (approximately $31 billion at that time) to social assistance programs (“bansos”), targeting especially swing constituencies. Concerns about incumbent advantage were already present in the run-up to the 2019 elections, where Jokowi employed similar tactics to garner support for his own ticket among regional officeholders and veterans.
Finally, independent electoral oversight has also been seriously undermined by the executive. The executive has increased its influence over the country’s main electoral management bodies; however, external observers have substantially contributed to the oversight process during elections. In 2021, Jokowi exceeded legal limits by appointing four government-affiliated individuals to the vetting team for KPU and Bawaslu, the General Elections Supervisory Agency tasked with overseeing the administration of general elections, ahead of nominations scheduled that year. Yet, challenges from electoral watchdogs and the Anies-Amin camp accusing Jokowi of meddling with the electoral process failed to convince the Constitutional Court. Other institutions and civil society actors have remained active in this regard, however. In February 2024, the Honorary Council of Election Management Bodies (DKPP) found all KPU commissioners to have committed an ethical violation by accepting Gibran Rakabuming Raka’s candidacy, leading to the removal of Chief Commissioner Hasyim Asy’ari. Grassroots initiatives like Kawal Pemilu and Jaga Pemilu have also strengthened oversight since 2014, though deterrence against electoral misconduct remains weak.
Civil society leaders and members of the general public are seriously and unfairly hindered in their ability to openly criticize or challenge the regime. State repression has increased since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, with cases of police brutality, unlawful killings, and enforced disappearances on the rise, while draconian laws have targeted dissenting voices from marginalized groups, such as Papuan and LGBTQ+ communities. The regime has also increased its presence in the online space by means of censorship, surveillance, and internet shutdowns.
Protests have been seriously and unfairly repressed. Instances of police brutality, torture, and cyber-patrol operations have been recorded, with repression intensifying since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Authorities deploy police and military to halt demonstrators, often using excessive force, as seen in the recent nationwide anti-government protests that spanned the end of August until early September 2025, when peaceful protesters opposing new housing allowances for lawmakers were met with tear gas, rubber bullets, and mass arrests. During these protests, the police unlawfully killed at least eight civilians and allegedly forcibly disappeared around 20 people. Similarly, during the 2020 protests against the Job Creation Law, rights groups documented around 400 cases of police brutality, 6,000 arrests, and coordinated cyber-patrol operations to spread pro-government narratives online. In the conflict-prone region of Papua, the police have been reported to use torture as a means of curbing separatist movements’ activism.
Dissidents have been systematically subjected to arbitrary and unlawful killings. In the Papua region, pervasive police brutality has targeted separatist groups for more than 15 years. Between December 2023 and November 2024, state security forces were reportedly responsible for 45 cases of extrajudicial killings. While many of these incidents occurred in the context of counterinsurgency operations, the Indonesian police and military have also violently intervened in peaceful pro-independence events and religious gatherings, killing around 100 people between 2010 and 2018.
The regime has also seriously and unfairly censored dissenting speech. This has included social media bans and increased surveillance systems. Since 2014, state-sponsored blanket bans have been targeting a series of popular websites that are usually used by government critics to express grievances about the regime, such as Vimeo, Imgur, and Reddit, on the grounds that these platforms were harboring pornographic/explicit content prohibited under the 2008 Pornography Act. Between 2020 and 2021, the Ministry of Communication and Informatics (now Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs) issued regulations that further tightened control by requiring mandatory registration of “electronic system providers,” including major social media platforms and search engines, and subjecting them to stringent data disclosure obligations. In 2025, the government suspended TikTok’s local operating license for its refusal to share data linked to the August/September protests. The license was reinstated in October after the company complied with the government’s demand.
Finally, the regime has systematically and disproportionately undermined marginalized groups’ ability to dissent, employing both active repression and digital censorship mechanisms to curb criticism of the government. In Papua, where indigenous people face overt discrimination based on their ethnic origin, security forces have targeted activists and organizations in an effort to suppress the region’s separatist aspirations. In 2019, a military attack on a university student dormitory in Surabaya prompted a series of peaceful protests the following year across 33 cities under the “Papuan Lives Matter” banner. Despite this, both the Jokowi and Prabowo governments have continued to deploy security forces to quell Papuan activism, leading to 370 arrests throughout 2024 and an additional 125 as of June 2025. Across Indonesia, legislation has facilitated online censorship and offline repression against LGBTQ+ activists and groups as well. Under the Electronic Information and Transactions (UU ITE) and Pornography Laws, Prabowo’s government has intensified state control over online spaces by blocking LGBTQ-related websites and applications deemed to have a “negative effect” on citizens, and by using surveillance systems to identify and compile databases of LGBTQ+ activists. Moreover, discriminatory police raids on private and public gatherings have led to the arrest of participants found in breach of the pornography law.
Institutions are somewhat independent but frequently constrained by the regime. Courts have enabled the regime’s attempts to tilt the electoral process in favor of the incumbent. New laws compel the judiciary to align with government interests through its rulings and extend legislative and executive influence over key oversight bodies. Finally, the Indonesian political landscape is marred by weak opposition and a preference to build big-tent coalitions that involve absorbing political rivals into the government, thereby undermining checks and balances. The regime has also strengthened the military’s role in civilian governance.
Courts have frequently and unfairly enabled the regime’s attempts to significantly undermine electoral competition and made the electoral process significantly skewed in its favor. This included tilting electoral rules to accommodate incumbent-aligned candidates. In 2023, the Constitutional Court paved the way for Jokowi’s 36-year-old son and former mayor of Surakarta, Gibran Rakabuming, to contest the vice presidency the following year by adding a special exemption to the minimum age requirement of 40, allowing candidates who had previously held regional office to run. Nonetheless, the Court has demonstrated some commitment to electoral fairness through its 2024 and 2025 decisions to review the parliamentary minimum threshold, which is currently set at 4% and criticized for disadvantaging smaller parties, and to lower nomination requirements for presidential and vice-presidential candidates.
Through a series of reforms, the regime has systematically and seriously weakened the independence and operational effectiveness of judicial institutions. The government and parliament have collaborated to pass legislation that makes judges more compliant with regime preferences by adding new procedures of dismissal and changing judges’ term limits. The Constitutional Court – which is empowered to review the most politically salient cases, including election disputes and constitutionality of laws – has frequently suffered from political meddling in its functioning. Judges to the Court are appointed jointly by the President, the House of Representatives (DPR), and the Supreme Court, a mechanism that compromises the Court’s statutory independence from other branches of government. The Court’s constituent law, originally passed in 2003, has been amended a total of three times by 2020. Each amendment has altered the term limits of Constitutional Court judges and their age requirements, as well as the Court’s oversight, and passed with limited to no public consultations. The Constitutional Court has also been notably reluctant to review these amendments both in substance and procedurally. Until 2020, for example, the Court received a total of 44 procedural challenges to the Constitutional Court Law, all of which were dismissed. In May 2024, the House of Representatives (DPR) proposed a fourth amendment to the Law, which would require sitting Constitutional Court judges to secure the joint approval of the President, DPR, and Supreme Court to renew their tenure every five years. The proposed amendment would also empower the three institutions to extend judges’ tenure beyond the current limit of 10 years at will. The Supreme Court is similarly prone to political interference. On February 4, 2025, the DPR rushed a revision to its Rules of Procedure that vests it with the power to conduct periodical evaluations of all public officials it appoints – including Supreme Court and Constitutional Court judges – and make binding recommendations for their dismissal. This change has been met with firm denunciation domestically.
The regime has seriously weakened the independence and operational effectiveness of oversight institutions. In the past 10 years, a series of legislative proposals have extended executive and legislative control over supervisory bodies by making their leadership conditional on parliamentary approval and restricting their investigative powers. In 2025, the revision of the above-mentioned DPR Rules of Procedures expanded the House’s power in terms of evaluation and dismissal of the leadership of other supervisory bodies, such as the KPK, the KPU, and Bawaslu. In 2019, parliament worked alongside the government to place the KPK under further executive control by introducing a new supervisory board and limiting investigation timeframes.
Finally, legislative institutions have also been seriously undermined in their effectiveness. Since winning the 2024 election, President Prabowo has often voiced his desire to absorb all parties in parliament into the government, and he was ultimately successful in doing so. As of December 2025, Prabowo has secured control of two-thirds of the DPR by obtaining the backing of seven out of eight parties represented in the legislature. The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) was initially projected to be the sole opposition party, but abandoned its position and has now claimed to be neither in the opposition nor in the government, and instead refers to itself as a “balancing party”. The result is a broad ruling coalition with little to no counterbalance, a recurrent phenomenon during post-election periods in Indonesia as winning candidates rapidly realign with the president-elect to secure top ministerial positions and other material benefits. Prabowo’s cabinet is emblematic of the pervasiveness of patronage and nepotism in Indonesian politics. Upon assuming office, Prabowo introduced 23 new ministerial portfolios without clear justifications. It is the largest cabinet since 1966, comprising around 100 individuals across ministries and government agencies, many of whom are known Prabowo loyalists. They include Minister of Defense Sjafrie Shamsoeddin, a former classmate of Prabowo’s who has remained close friends with him, and Cabinet Secretary Teddy Indra Wijaya, Prabowo’s personal aide who is also an active military officer.
The regime has extended military influence over civilian governance. In March 2025, Prabowo ratified an amendment to the 2004 National Armed Forces Act (UU TNI), following unanimous approval by parliament. Previously, serving military officers could assume civilian roles only in sectors related to security, such as the defense ministry and the state intelligence agency. The revision has significantly broadened this scope, allowing active-duty officers to occupy a wider range of government posts, including the attorney general’s office and the state secretariat, as exemplified by the appointment of Teddy Indra Wijaya. Civil society organizations (CSOs) contended that this change risks undermining the professionalism of the armed forces as well as restoring the military’s active participation in governance by ensuring greater veto powers in policy-making.
