Tom Pepinsky

Category: Current Affairs

  • Presidential Imagery, Imam Bonjol Edition

    Several days ago I wondered about our ability to understand the support that Prabowo Subianto’s presidential campaign is getting. Since then, we have had two very useful contributions, one by Ed Aspinall and another by Nicholas Herriman. Both come very highly recommended.

    Another source of information is the imagery that the two campaigns use. This can help us to understand what messages Prabowo’s campaign thinks will appeal to voters. I’ve tried to capture this with some pictures taken during my morning stroll along Imam Bonjol/Diponegoro street in central Jakarta. (Forgive the lousy picture quality…these were all taken on a phone.)

    We begin with the headquarters of PPP, an Islamist party (note the Ka’aba on their logo) which supports Prabowo.
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    They’ve gone with Pilih yang bersih, jujur, tegas [= choose the ones who are clean, honest, and resolute]. This is interesting because jujur (honest) is one term almost always associated with Jokowi. Indeed, right across the street, we have a Petisi pendukung Jokowi-JK [= Petition of Jokowi-JK supporters]
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    At the bottom we see Berani Joejoer [= brave honest]. I’m not sure what meaning the old-style spelling conveys. Around the corner, one of my favorite images of Soekarno, now partially obscured by a Jokowi banner:
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    Further down the street, we get a more typical Prabowo banner from FKPPI, a youth group connected to a military retirees association.
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    The picture is lousy, but you should be able to make out Anak Prajurit Dukung Prabowo: 1 Komando Semua [= Soldiers’ Children Support Prabowo: One Commando for All], which I suppose is a little ironic when you take into account that Prabowo was summarily dismissed from his position as Kostrad commander right after his father-in-law stepped down.

    Further on down, at the headquarters of Hanura, we see banners in support of Jokowi. Hanura is the party founded by Wiranto, the general who dismissed Prabowo back in 1998 and who has run himself unsuccessfully several times for president.
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    The shadows obscure a little wordplay, with the phrase Kopi Jokja, or Konferensi Pemuda Indonesia untuk Jokowi Jusuf Kalla [= Conference of Indonesian Youth for Jokowi and Jusuf Kalla]. The pun is that this sounds a lot like “Yogya coffee,” recalling the central Javanese city of Yogyajakarta.

    A bit further down the street, another one for Prabowo.
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    There’s a lot going on here.

    1. Islamic imagery, with Marhaban Ya Ramadhan written in a kind of Arabic-looking Latin script complete with randomly placed diacritic dots.
    2. Some traditional Javanese imagery, with Dwi Tunggal [roughly = two in one] evoking Indonesia’s first President and Vice President pairing of Soekarno and Mohammad Hatta.
    3. Coblos No 1 demi harga diri bangsa Indonesia [= Choose No 1 for the pride/self-worth of the Indonesian nation] reflecting the narrative that Prabowo will help Indonesia to be a stronger and prouder country.

    And to bring my walk to a close, one more for Prabowo.
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    We see voters urged to Selamatkan Indonesia [= Save Indonesia], and Indonesia Bangkit [= Indonesia awakens]. The hashtag #JakartaBangkit [= Jakarta awakens], looking on Twitter, is associated with comments that criticize Jokowi’s performance as Jakarta Governor.

    So there we have it. Over the course of about half a mile along one of Jakarta’s most prosperous downtown streets, a wealth of imagery conveying the tone of each campaign. It’s no substitute at all for the kinds of deep analysis that Aspinall and Herriman provide, and it doesn’t at all answer my question about why such messages generate support for Prabowo, but it does give a very basic sense of what’s going on.

    Update

    I caught one final picture on my walk to dinner. This is taken at twilight, and the busy street kept me from getting too close, but it is perhaps the most interesting Jokowi banner.
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    This reads Nasionalis sejati pasti menghargai pluralisme [= a true nationalist certainly values pluralism], followed by Jokowi adalah kita [= Jokowi is us]. Using pluralisme for pluralism rather than some Indonesian equivalent like kebhinnekaan conveys a strong message. I leave it to the reader to make sense of the larger meaning behind this.

  • Is There a Case for Prabowo? But Seriously Folks…

    My previous post on whether or not there is case for Prabowo Subianto for president (answer here) was obviously meant as a bit of a joke. Not entirely a joke, as this really is my position, yet as I wrote in a Facebook comment thread, there is something deeper that led me to that blogpost.

    there is an echo-chamber quality in my circle of colleagues and friends in Indonesia or who work on Indonesia. I wanted to write a post on that, but that got me thinking about whether I could develop an argument in favor of voting for Prabowo, and I actually thought about it for several hours yesterday.

    What I mean is that I just don’t know very many Prabowo supporters. By my informal and perhaps incomplete count, I have two not-very-close friends who are Prabowo supporters, and no close friends. I know a good deal of people who profess that they will not vote for anyone in the upcoming Indonesian elections (golput) but that’s far from the same. Among foreign analysts, I know some people who write things that aren’t as critical of Prabowo as I would like, or who try to think about what a Prabowo candidacy might mean, but I’ve yet to see a serious affirmative case written in English for Prabowo over Jokowi.

    The problem is that I have a biased sample of Indonesians and Indonesia-watchers. Prabowo is not doing nearly as poorly in the polls as my census of my friends, colleagues, and acquaintances would indicate. That means that I must be very careful in thinking carefully about Prabowo in this election. I suspect that many others are like me. So,

    I really hope that I have the chance to read a serious analysis of Prabowo voters that does not reduce them to chumps, vote-sellers, or ignoramuses, but actually takes seriously their support for Prabowo. Like, in the same way that many of us consider it to be self-evident that there are good reasons to vote for Jokowi.

    This means something more than correlations between what people think, or who they are, and their preferred candidates. A friend mentioned the issue of tegas (decisive or resolute) versus jujur (honest or upright), and that voters associate the former with Prabowo and the latter with Jokowi. This is indeed important, but here’s my response:

    I’m looking for something more than just what people associate with different candidates. I want the interior question of why someone would prefer tegas to jujur, or how people weigh tradeoffs and reason about alternatives. Something non tautological about what kinds of people make those sorts of decisions, pushing them on his negatives to see what they say.

    My own worry is that most scholars and observers are not equipped to produce that kind of analysis. If such analysis is required, the result will be impressionistic accounts that inevitably reflect the beliefs and perspectives of the analyst. I am the first to admit that I do not actually understand the level of popular support for Prabowo’s candidacy. My maintained hypothesis is that it is more than stupidity, corruption, or an inability to think critically (c.f. Vedi Hadiz’s comments on the stupidity of the middle class). That’s why—remembering that to understand support for Prabowo is not to condone or support his candidacy—I hope that there is serious effort out there to make sense of what makes Prabowo so popular.