The handover at the top of Indonesian politics was settled in a single morning. On 20 October 2024, Prabowo Subianto, a former army general who had spent the outgoing term as defence minister, took the oath as Indonesia’s eighth president in Jakarta. He succeeded Joko Widodo, who had run the world’s fourth most populous nation for ten years.
Officials noted the arithmetic behind the transition. Prabowo and his running mate, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, the eldest son of Widodo and a one-time mayor of Surakarta, had won the 14 February 2024 contest in a landslide. Prabowo is 73; Gibran, at 37, became the country’s youngest-ever vice president.
In his first address, the new president named national unity and food security as his top priorities. He promised that the country’s natural resources would be put to work for the benefit of ordinary Indonesians, and that the work of the previous administration would carry on. The commitment that matters most to markets is continuity: Prabowo said he would keep Widodo’s drive to industrialise mining commodities and the ban on shipping unprocessed ores and minerals abroad.
“We will carry out this oath to the best of our ability and with accountability, prioritising all the people, including those who did not vote for us,” he said.
Prabowo then turned to a theme that has run through Jakarta’s foreign policy for decades: solidarity with Palestine. He grounded it in colonial memory, recalling a sign he had seen at a pool in the Manggarai area while in uniform in 1978. It read “honden en inlander verboden”, Dutch for “dogs and native Indonesians not allowed.” “We have to defend the oppressed, and that is why we support Palestinian independence,” he said.
The pledge came with a concrete offer. Indonesia, he said, stood ready to send more logistics aid and to evacuate the injured and the traumatised children, opening hospitals, military ones included, to Palestinians hurt in what he called an unfair war. That pipeline already runs through a partnership with the United Arab Emirates that sends Indonesian medical workers to treat the wounded.
The ceremony drew foreign dignitaries, among them Turkish Defence Minister Yasar Guler, who carried the wishes of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Prabowo and Gibran were then due to travel to the state palace through cheering crowds, closing the formal transfer from a decade of Widodo rule.
Sources
- Prabowo Subianto sworn in as Indonesian president-Xinhua
- Indonesia's Prabowo vows to support Palestine in debut speech as president – TRT World
