Prabowo Subianto

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July 8, 2021

Medicine chain gang

Good Distribution Practice in rural Indonesia. Photo: Elizabeth Pisani Getting medicines to patients across Indonesia’s 13,000 islands: what could possibly go wrong? Let’s start with an apology for a silence which some of you have been kind enough to point out has been going on muuuuuuch too long. It turns out that pandemics are busy times for people whose day job is in infectious disease epidemiology. They also keep one away from loved-ones, including Bad Boyfriends. This is the longest…

July 22, 2014

Let the cow-trading begin!

Well, it’s official. Over 133 million Indonesians cast their votes peacefully, had them counted repeatedly and now have a new president elect. Congratulations to Indonesians for staying unflustered in the face of Prabowo Subianto’s schoolboy tantrums….

July 12, 2014

Keep calm, Indonesia. But not too calm.

“Indonesians are not idiots!” I proclaimed in my final post before the election, waxing lyrical about the common sense of the Indonesian electorate. They wouldn’t, I predicted, be swayed by Prabowo Subianto’s bluster. By election day I was getting very nervous indeed. Then the Quick Count results came through. “I told you so” is never a pretty sentence, but I was inordinately happy to be able to pronounce it. It appears, though, that I was wrong about a large minority…

Voting booth in Indonesian elections

July 3, 2014

[I really hope] Indonesians are not idiots

Originally written for New Mandala under the title “Indonesians are not idiots”. Interesting comments @ the original post. As Prabowo Subianto’s messianic nationalism chomps through rival presidential candidate Joko Widodo’s once-unassailable lead in Indonesia’s opinion polls, New Mandala and other fora have flared with concern. Prabowo is a thug, they say (though a lot more politely); he will shut down democracy, he will take Indonesia back to the bad old days of autocracy-in-the-name-of-stability. If he’s elected, he may well do…

June 17, 2014

Prabowo or Jokowi: does it really matter?

With two televised debates down and three to go, opinion is divided on which of Indonesia’s two presidential candidates is looking most, well, presidential…..

November 6, 2012

Indonesia’s iron-fisted seducer takes in the Rothschilds

The US elections, taking place as I write, have not been much on the radar screens in the parts of Indonesia I’ve been in lately. Unlike the Indonesian elections, which are not due until 2014. Dashing out in front of the pack is Prabowo Subianto, a Suharto clone who is not, actually, a presidential candidate yet, according to his office. Odd, then, that I stumbled on to two shiny new ambulances parked incongruously outside a Moslem saint’s grave in Lombok…