Shadow games in Indonesia: Tricks and suspected intrigues end in resignation

Indonesian Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka submitted his resignation to Parliament in Jakarta on Thursday. In doing so, he forestalled possible impeachment proceedings, which 120 MPs from all 8 parliamentary groups had called for the day before. Since the government coalition can rely on a majority of around 80 percent in parliament, many of its MPs were among them.

In October, the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court ruled that the educational qualifications submitted by 39-year-old Gibran to run for the 2004 elections did not meet minimum standards. However, both judgments did not directly call on him to resign, which is what the parliamentarians now wanted to achieve.

Gibran had already submitted his resignation to President Prabowo Subianto on Tuesday. After a two and a half hour conversation, it remained unclear whether Prabowo had accepted his resignation. His spokesman did not confirm this, but also did not say that Prabowo had rejected the request to resign. Rather, he is said to have suggested to Gibran to challenge the verdicts. But they are final and therefore at least legally final.

After the meeting with Prabowo, Gibran also initially left open the status of his resignation. Instead, he said that the 74-year-old Prabowo, a general once fired for human rights abuses and former son-in-law of former dictator Suharto, was "like a father" to him.

Gibran is the eldest son of Prabowo's predecessor Joko Widodo, whom everyone in Indonesia calls Jokowi. Gibran has his father to thank for his previous vice-presidency. Because of this, Jokowi secured influence over the government led by Prabowo after the end of his own term in office. Conversely, Probowo owed his own election victory in 2024 to the support of the more popular Jokowi, who thereby stabbed his own party and its more progressive candidate in the back. With Gibran's resignation, Jokowi's power as a behind-the-scenes puller and as the founding father of his own political dynasty is likely to have been greatly weakened. Probowo, on the other hand, is likely to act more freely in the future.

Before their Machiavellian coalition, symbolized by Gibran's vice presidency, Jokowi and Prabowo had been bitter competitors. As a former furniture manufacturer from Solo in Central Java, Jokowi had a liberal-progressive reputation at the beginning of his presidency in 2014, while his opponent at the time, Prabowo, was seen as a representative of authoritarian politics from dictatorship times who flirted with Islamists.

Jokowi won the 2014 and 2019 elections, but in 2019 he surprisingly included Prabowo as defense minister in his cabinet. Because Jokowi was no longer allowed to run in the 2024 elections, he forged an alliance with his former opponent and exploited his son Gibran in the process.

In order for Gibran, who was only 36 years old at the time, to be allowed to run for the vice presidency despite the mandatory minimum age of 40, a court exempted him from the age limit. The court president who made this possible with his vote was Jokowi's own brother-in-law. Although he was later demoted, the sentence remained valid.

During his two years in office, Gibran remained colorless while Prabowo increasingly distanced himself from projects and people linked to Jokowi, such as the planned relocation of the capital to Kalimantan. But to the outside world there was no open break between Jokowi and Prabowo. After the court decisions, Prabowo Gibran neither fired nor officially accepted his resignation. However, he did not stop members of his coalition from initiating impeachment proceedings against Gibran. He just had to wait.

Conversely, Jokowi also reacted to his son's resignation seemingly calmly: "I told Gibran that positions are only temporary, positions are fleeting," he told journalists in Solo. His family will continue to support Prabowo, especially if his policies are in the interests of broad sections of the population.

But two weeks ago, a wiretapping scandal was exposed, which political professor Burhanuddin Muhtadi from the Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta Islamic State University (UIN) interpreted in a podcast by Indonesia's largest newspaper Kompas as a sign of the break between Prabowo and Jokowi. It was discovered that Prabowo and other politicians, as well as activists and journalists, had their phones tapped for months, but Jokowi's phone was probably not.

Prabowo's chief of staff, Listyo Sigit Prabowo, was identified as responsible. Listyo was the Indonesian police chief until October and is considered a close confidante of Jokowi. He had already made him police chief in his hometown of Solo and later gave him this position at the national level. The background to the wiretapping scandal is still unclear. Four people have been arrested so far, including Listyo. For security, 20,000 additional soldiers were sent to Jakarta.

Prabowo, whose popularity has fallen sharply in polls this year due to economic problems and uncontrolled fires, among other things, now has 60 days to propose two candidates to Parliament to replace Gibran. That then selects one.