NEARLY three decades after Reformasi, Indonesia’s democratic guardrails are eroding without rupture and without fanfare.
In May 1998, as students at the University of Indonesia, we proudly marched in yellow jackets with thousands of other university students, convinced that democracy would only move forward. It did. Within days, a president of 32 years stepped down, and the political system opened in ways that had not been possible before. Reformasi felt like a decisive break, and for a long time it was treated as irreversible.
Nearly three decades later, that certainty is fading.
Elections still take place. Governments still change. The language of democracy remains intact. What has shifted is harder to see: how decisions are made, who can challenge them, and how far institutions still constrain those in power.
Change has come less through rupture than through accumulation: revisions to laws, redesign of institutions, and appointments that gradually stretch existing boundaries.
This pattern is not unique to Indonesia. Across Southeast Asia, democratic institutions are increasingly shaped rather than dismantled. Elections remain, but everything else around them shifts.
With the exception of Myanmar, no tanks were needed. The rules did the work.
Thailand is the clearest example. In May 2023, the Move Forward Party won the largest share of seats, over 14 million votes, delivering a genuine electoral upset. Within weeks, its leader was disqualified on technical grounds. By the following year, the party itself was dissolved. The process followed formal steps, but the result did not reflect the original electoral mandate. Cambodia and the Philippines show related patterns, constraining opposition while preserving the appearance of process.
With the exception of Myanmar, no tanks were needed. The rules did the work.
Political scientists describe this as “competitive authoritarianism”: systems where elections and institutions formally exist, but rules and their application are shaped to systematically advantage incumbents.
Indonesia is not there. But recent developments point in that direction.
The revision of the Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI) Law in 2025 expands the military’s role in civilian governance, partially reversing a core principle of post-1998 reform. Civilian supremacy still exists, but the boundary between military and civilian roles is less clear than before. As active and retired military officers take positions in civilian agencies, what was once debated is increasingly treated as normal practice.
The weakening of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has had more direct effects. Since the 2019 legal revision placed the institution under executive oversight, it has undergone internal restructuring, personnel changes, and a drop in major investigations. The impact is cumulative. Officials now operate with a different sense of enforcement risk than they did a decade ago. The KPK’s strength was not only in its authority, but also credibility – an important factor that determined behaviour.
The current administration has also shown a more constrained relationship with public criticism than earlier reform-era governments. Since taking office in 2024, President Prabowo Subianto has publicly affirmed democratic freedoms and the right to protest. At the same time, there is renewed concern about shrinking space for dissent. Responses to large-scale demonstrations and critical reporting have at times been forceful in practice – from extensive police deployments and arrests to intimidation of journalists and civil society actors.
The establishment of the sovereign wealth fund Danantara in 2025 raises another issue. Sovereign funds are not unusual and can function effectively. The question is how they are governed. When oversight is limited and decision-making concentrated, large pools of capital become more exposed to political direction. Over time, this affects not only efficiency but also control over state-linked resources.
These shifts are often justified in the language of necessity, that strong leadership and faster decision-making support development. Indonesia does need speed in areas such as energy transition and industrial upgrading. But speed and oversight are not necessarily opposites. Indonesia’s own experience after 1998 suggests the opposite. Greater predictability, especially on corruption, helped restore investor confidence in the system.
Reformasi was never inevitable. It was the product of pressure and a shared belief that power should be constrained. Twenty-eight years past that momentum, we are not arguing that Reformasi is over or that Indonesia is facing a systemic breakdown. There are no mass protests tied to these changes. Our elections remain competitive. We have a politically aware middle class that has not disengaged. Our civil society continues to push back. These are important differences between Indonesia and more tightly controlled systems in the region.
But democratic systems do not depend only on formal institutions. They also depend on expectations about credibility – again, a factor that determines behaviour.
Indonesia is unlikely to abandon elections. Excitement already abounds about the upcoming cycle in 2029. But what feels different from 1998 is that elections alone no longer feel sufficient to guarantee what Reformasi once promised.
Source: Lowy Institute, The Interpreter
