Indonesia’s government appears to have backed down in its attempt to legalize the appointment of serving military personnel to civilian government positions, after an outcry that the administration was seeking to undermine post-Suharto norms about the role of the country’s military.
Yesterday, President Prabowo Subianto’s administration introduced a diluted version of proposed changes to the 2004 Indonesian Military (TNI) Law to the House of Representatives’ Defense, Foreign Affairs, and Intelligence Commission. According to a report by Reuters, a previous draft of the amendment would have given the president the right to appoint serving military officers anywhere in the government. The new draft tabled yesterday added a provision stating that soldiers filling civilian posts must first resign from service, Indonesia’s Defense Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin told reporters yesterday, after the committee’s first hearing on the legislation.
“Any military officer to be assigned in a ministry or state agency must retire,” Sjafrie said. “We could only propose them to (be assigned) in ministry or state agency after the retirement.”
The TNI Law currently permits serving military personnel to take civilian posts in 10 mostly security-related institutions, such as the Ministry of Defense and the state intelligence agency. The new legislation would expand this to include five more state agencies, including the Attorney General’s Office and the National Counter Terrorism Agency, according to Reuters. Sjafrie said the government expected the new legislation to be passed this month.
The change follows an outcry from human rights groups about the rising influence of the military under Prabowo, a former military officer and ex-son-in-law of Suharto who rose to prominence during the latter years of the New Order, when the military was at its peak of power and prominence.
Since his inauguration in October, Prabowo has brought a military tenor to the Indonesian government and flagged a “greater political centrality and policy influence for the military-security apparatus.” On his first day as president, Prabowo appointed his personal assistant, Maj. Teddy Indra Wijaya, an active military officer, as cabinet secretary. He has also appointed serving military personnel to key posts at the Ministry of Transportation, Ministry of Agriculture, the national food agency Bulog, and the national agency that oversees Islamic pilgrimages to Mecca, in some cases in apparent violation of the TNI Law.
His “Red and White” cabinet also includes a number of retired military personnel. Chief among them is Sugiono, a former first lieutenant in the special forces, who Prabowo appointed as foreign minister, replacing the career diplomat Retno Marsudi. As Greta Nabbs-Keller of the University of Queensland has noted, this marks a break even from the time of Suharto, who preferred to appoint career diplomats to head the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
All of this has raised justified concerns about a reinstatement of the Suharto-era doctrine of dwifungsi, or “dual function.” As Adam Schwarz wrote in his 2000 book “A Nation In Waiting: Indonesia’s Search for Stability,” dwifungsi allowed “the military’s influence to percolate into virtually every nook and cranny of society.” As Schwarz wrote, “military officers hold key positions all through the government, from city mayors, ambassadors, and provincial governors to senior positions in central government ministries, regional bureaucracies, state-owned enterprises, the judiciary, the umbrella labor union, Golkar, and in the cabinet itself.”
The fall of Suharto in May 1998 brought “dual function” to an end, coralling the army’s influence and confining it to purely security-related functions – a new status quo that was sealed by the passage of the TNI Law in 2004.
However, according to many Indonesian observers, the principle of civilian supremacy has been slowly eroding for years. Under Prabowo’s predecessor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, networks of former army men came to play an increasingly prominent role in the Indonesian government. Especially during his second term, Jokowi installed retired army generals in important civilian posts, including as defense minister, coordinating ministers, and head of state intelligence. Among the most important of these was the jack-of-all-trades Luhut Pandjaitan, a former Suharto era special forces general. Jokowi also courted controversy when he appointed Doni Monardo, then an active army general, to head the National Agency for Disaster Countermeasure in 2019.
As Natalie Sambhi noted at the time, “it’s common for retired military officers to enter politics and become ministers, but the thinking of these figures will inevitably permeate their portfolios.”
The fact that the Indonesian government has been forced to step back from a full legalization of military appointments in government is a sign that the public outcry has had some effect. But even if passed in its current form, the changes to the TNI Law will herald a further expansion of the military’s influence in Indonesian political life, ensuring that the drift that took place under Jokowi continues apace under his successor.
