Frabowo Subianto

8th President of Indonesia .

As Suharto 's son-in-law , he served in the Indonesian Army and was promoted to lieutenant general . After retirement, he founded the Great Indonesian Movement Party in 2008 and entered politics as its leader. He ran in the 2019 presidential election, but was defeated by President Joko Widodo (Joko Widodo). Although he was considered a strong opponent to the incumbent president and was defeated, he was appointed Minister of National Defense under the Joko Widodo administration through political compromise, and served as the 26th Minister of National Defense for five years starting in 2019.

Perhaps due to being a member of Joko Widodo's government for five years, he nominated his son as a vice presidential candidate and ran as his running mate. In the 2024 presidential election, he received virtually tacit support from Joko Widodo even though they belong to different parties, and won by a large margin, becoming the 8th candidate. was elected as president. This is the third petition in the world[6] He became the president and the first president of Indonesia, and as of 2024, the year of his election and inauguration, he was 73 years old, making him the oldest president in Indonesian history. Shortly after confirming his victory in the presidential election, according to President Joko Widodo's decision, he was honorably promoted to reserve army captain and reinstated as a soldier.

He was inaugurated as the 8th President of Indonesia on October 20, 2024. He is the first president in Indonesian history to have a history of divorce, the president who did not remarry after divorce, the second president to be a businessman , and the fourth president to have a military background . His personality is so rough and fierce that he is nicknamed Indonesia 's Donald Trump .[7]

He was born into one of Indonesia's most prestigious political families. His father, Sumitro Jojohadikusumo, is an elite who served as Minister of Economy in the Sukarno government and Minister of Technology in the Suharto government, and his grandfather, Margono Jojohadikusumo, also served as a member of the Supreme Advisory Council (DPA).[8] He was a political heavyweight, serving as the first chairman and a member of the Independent Preparatory Research Committee (BPUPK).

In the 1960s, as his father Sumitro went into exile due to differences in political views with Sukarno, Prabowo also spent his formative years wandering around Switzerland , Singapore , Thailand , Malaysia , and England . Prabowo attended high school at Victoria Institute in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and graduated from the American School in London , England from 1966 to 1968 . According to people around him at the time, Prabowo was strategic and had a strong desire for power.

Afterwards, at the recommendation of his father, he entered the Indonesian National Command School in Magelang in 1970 and graduated in 1974. Although he was the same classmate as former President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono , it is said that Prabowo was not particularly good at studying compared to Yudhoyono, who was said to be a bright talent and graduated at the top of his class from the military academy in 1973.[9] After graduation, at the age of 26, he participated in the East Timor annexation operation as the youngest platoon leader in the Army's Special Forces (Kopassus) , and in 1978, he achieved the feat of killing Nicolau dos Reis Lovato, the top leader of the East Timor Revolutionary Front and the second president of East Timor at the time .

He was favored by Suharto, married his daughter in 1983, and later rose to prominence as the army's favorite. Received advanced officer training in 1985. In the 1990s, he rose through the ranks as Suharto's right-hand man. In 1992, as commander of the Airborne Forces of the Army's Strategic Reserve Corps (Kostrad), he arrested National Liberation Army commander Shanana Gusmão on charges of treason during the East Timor operation.[10] After serving as deputy commander of the Army Special Forces in 1994, commander (major general) of the Special Forces in 1995, and commander of the Army Strategic Reserve Corps in 1998, he rose to the rank of lieutenant general at the age of 46 . Both the Army Special Forces and the Strategic Reserve Corps were the Army's elite, and the commanders of both held important positions within the Army.

In the 1990s, he took the lead in using force to silence soldiers and politicians who criticized the Suharto dictatorship, both inside and outside the military. In particular, he suppressed the opposition Democratic Party at the time, orchestrating a coup within the Democratic Party in 1996 and toppling Megawati Sukarnoputri . In 1997, he also oppressed Abdurrahman Wahit, a critic of Suharto, and assassinated clerics who sympathized with him. As anti-government protests intensified in 1997, Prabowo's crackdown became more severe, kidnapping and imprisoning 22 leading pro-democracy activists, 13 of whom are still missing. In particular, when the Indonesian racial riots broke out in May 1998 , just before the collapse of the Suharto regime , he was accused of inciting a riot behind the scenes and causing greater chaos in order to divert his anger towards the Chinese and to overshadow his rival and military commander, Wiranto , with the image that he was unable to properly maintain security in the capital city of Jakarta .

On May 21, 1998, Suharto resigned and Vice President Habibie took over the presidency. After Suharto's fall, the anti-Prabowo faction within the army, Wiranto , took control of the army, and Prabowo, who was the head of Suharto's personal guard, was stripped of his military registration and dishonorably discharged in August 1998 for "misinterpreting orders" regarding the kidnapping of a pro-democracy activist. After being discharged from the military, he went into exile in Jordan and lived there for three years, including obtaining Jordanian citizenship.

While living in Jordan, Prabowo lived a prosperous life, using the connections he had built up in the military and political circles to join his younger brother Hashim's business, transforming himself into an entrepreneur, and entering the Kazakh oil business. Then he quietly returned to Indonesia, started a business dealing in mining, palm oil farming, lumber, and paper, and amassed enormous wealth. Prabowo's Nusantara Group today has 27 subsidiaries in Indonesia and abroad. At the same time, he entered politics and ran for the presidential nomination in Golkar in 2004 as a right-wing candidate within the party that advocated exclusive, hard-line Indonesian-centrism. Although he was defeated here, he sensed that there was not much resistance against him in his political circles and entered the political world in earnest.

In 2008, he took out the right-wing faction within Golkar that supported him and founded the Great Indonesian Movement Party , promoting himself as 'Indonesia's warrior fighting neoliberalism '. This was to differentiate himself from President Yudhoyono , who had the image of introducing and implementing neoliberal policies in Indonesia at the time . In 2009, the party succeeded in entering the National Assembly as the 8th largest party with 4.6% of the vote, and briefly cooperated with Megawati, whom he had oppressed in the past.[11] They entered the presidential election as vice-presidential candidates, but Megawati and Prabowo were defeated in second place.

However, he became famous as a vice-presidential candidate, and when the Yudhoyono administration, which won the 2009 presidential election, suffered a drop in approval ratings due to corruption scandals, he succeeded in making an image as an anti-Yudoyono politician with integrity and perseverance, and suddenly became a presidential candidate. In 2012, he ranked first in a presidential poll. At this time, it was also evaluated that Prabowo was likely to be elected as the next president.

If there was a problem with Prabowo, who was a strong presidential candidate, it was the image of 'Suharto's top guard and right-hand man' that the progressive camp still remembered , and Prabowo's history of oppressing and persecuting political opponents and political minorities could not be erased no matter how much water was poured. To dilute this, Prabowo tried to cultivate Joko Widodo, a member of the progressive camp , as an ally during the 2012 Jakarta gubernatorial election by financing his election expenses. However, Joko Widodo did a very good job as governor of Jakarta, which attracted attention, and surprisingly, in 2013, Jokowi surpassed Prabowo's approval rating as the new presidential candidate. Prabowo immediately began to check Jokowi, and at the last minute, with public opinion polls showing a close race within the margin of error, he even mobilized empty propaganda such as "Indonesia is being exploited by developed countries" and "Jokowi is a communist and a fake Muslim", but it was not enough to stop Jokowi's rise and he was ultimately defeated by Jokowi in the 2014 presidential election.

At this time, Joko Widodo's victory was a surprising result created by Joko Wido's individual political acumen and the support of his supporters. At the time, the electoral coalition consisted of the Democratic Party of Struggle , the People's Democratic Party , the National Enlightenment Party , and the People's Conscience Party (Haruna), which supported Joko Widodo, versus the Great Indonesian Movement Party , Golkar , the People's Authorization Party , the Democratic Party , the United Development Party (PPP), the Prosperity and Justice Party , and the Wolseong Party (PBB), which supported Prabowo. It was a clear structure of a center-left-center coalition vs. a center-right-right coalition, which is rare in Indonesian politics, and the vote rate in the general election held three months before the presidential election was 40.9% for the former and 59.1% for the latter, so considering only the vote rate in the general election, Prabowo's easy victory was natural. Prabowo was defeated even though even the Democratic Party (centre to center right) affiliated with former President Yudhoyono, which Prabowo had targeted, supported Prabowo.

Prabowo suddenly announced his resignation on July 22, when the official vote count results were scheduled to be announced, and rejected the election results and declared them unconstitutional, saying that the election had been marred by "large-scale structural and systematic fraud" and that democracy had disappeared . Even though Joko Wido was ahead in most exit polls, he changed his attitude of always insisting on his victory. It was an anti-democratic attempt to completely deny the legitimacy of the election for the first time since democratization in 1998. In particular, the prevailing analysis was that if Prabowo had actually resigned, he would be legally disqualified as a candidate, making a lawsuit impossible, and even if he filed a lawsuit, the vote margin would be large, making it difficult to overturn the result.[12] Eventually, Joko Widodo's election was officially announced that evening, and on August 21, 2014, the Constitutional Court dismissed Prabowo's appeal.

In the 2019 presidential election, Sandhya ran again with Uno as his vice presidential running mate. He received support from the Great Indonesian Movement Party, the People's Empowerment Party , the Prosperity and Justice Party , the Democratic Party (Indonesia) , and the Workers' Party (a far-right party outside the National Assembly) and once again faced Joko Widodo. Exit poll results showed that Joko Widodo won by about 10%, but Prabowo claimed victory, saying that he received 62% of the votes according to his own tally. Prabowo's unsubstantiated claims of election fraud led to violent protests by supporters in Jakarta , during which a riot broke out, leaving 8 people dead and 737 injured. In June 2019, the Constitutional Court unanimously dismissed Prabowo's lawsuit challenging the election results.

On July 14, 2019, Prabowo met with Joko Widodo inside the Jakarta MRT subway, finally admitted defeat, congratulated Jokowi on his election, and apologized for criticizing Jokowi during the presidential election. However, some extreme supporters who had hoped that Prabowo would remain in the opposition party and continue to fight expressed great disappointment in this move and strongly criticized Prabowo.

In the end, the Great Indonesia Movement Party led by Prabowo suddenly joined Joko Widodo's 'Forward Indonesia Coalition' cabinet on October 21, 2019, and Prabowo himself was appointed as Minister of Defense on October 23, two days later, and became a cabinet member of the Joko Widodo government.

Although he had a political relationship with Joko Widodo , whose political views are almost opposite , in two presidential elections , it is difficult to say that Prabowo is Joko Widodo's political opponent as of April 2023, when the 2024 Indonesian presidential election began in earnest. lost. Although their political views still do not match well, in order to take advantage of the popularity of Joko Widodo, whose approval ratings continue to soar until the latter half of his term, Minister Prabowo directly or indirectly declared that he will inherit Jokowi's legacy when he becomes the next president, implicitly implying that Jokowi This is because he claims to be the successor to . In the current situation where even Prabowo is bending to Joko Widodo, the 2024 presidential election structure is moving closer to a competition for Jokowi's successor.

In the end, with Joko Widodo's implicit support, Joko Widodo's son, Gibran Raqqabooming Raqqa, was nominated as his running mate, and after nomination, the approval rating rose vertically to exceed 51%. In the end, he was elected with 58.57% of the sample vote in the 2024 presidential election. #

On June 23, 2025, he talked to President Lee Jae -myung . President Prava Bo War said, "We sincerely congratulate Lee's inauguration and expect close cooperation with President Lee to make his relationship with Korea, a long -time friend and strategic partner." #

In August 2025, as part of the food security policy, about 100 army battalions were organized to support the agricultural sector. This has been talked about as the most common problem in the 21st century. #

Inheriting his father's socialist economic views, he argues that the liberal market economy has failed. They value government intervention, saying that most Indonesians do not enjoy equal opportunities under the liberal market economic system. They have the idea that the state should actively intervene and control the market under the so-called state capitalism model, and are moving to revive the Benteng Program, a nationalist policy that gives preference to local Indonesian companies over foreign capital. The logic is to focus on resource advancement and the semiconductor industry by referring to the development dictatorship model of his father-in-law, President Suharto .

The free school meal policy, which was a key pledge during the 2024 presidential election, was actually implemented after being elected. Prabowo started the pilot project by emphasizing the need for free school meals based on the fact that about 25% of Indonesian children skip breakfast. The purpose is to foster excellent human resources, reduce stunting and poverty rates, and revitalize the economy by providing minimum nutrition to students and pregnant women. It was a large-scale project targeting at least 82.9 million people, including preschool children to secondary school students, and pregnant and lactating women, in 26 states across the country under the supervision of the National Nutrition Agency starting January 6, 2025 . However, it was plagued by controversy over astronomical financial resources that required 42.7 trillion won, which is a whopping 7% of the national budget, and all kinds of criticism erupted, including a series of food poisoning incidents, controversy over corruption, and the excessively poor meal prices (800 won per meal). In the end, as the exchange rate fell to a level not seen even during the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the stock index plunged 31% in 2026, and foreign investment ebbed away, President Prabowo had no choice but to cut the original budget of 335 trillion rupiah for 2026 to 268 trillion rupiah, and recently added about 40 to 50 trillion rupiah (about $2.6 billion) more. A large-scale budget reduction was implemented. Due to a lack of budget, the number of people subject to management in 2026 was drastically reduced from 62.5 million to 49 million.

In the 70s and 80s, he was the son-in-law and loyal right-hand man of Suharto , Indonesia's military dictator , and a key figure in protecting his dictatorship . He acted as a zealous action leader to protect Suharto 's throne, and even planned to mobilize the 81st Counter-Terrorism Detachment, of which he was the commander, to kidnap General LB Murdani and other related generals who were rumored to be plotting a coup, but was stopped when Major Ruhut Binsar Panjaitan, the commander of the detachment, ordered the operation to be canceled and confiscated all weapons and equipment. The coup threat targeting Suharto was later found to be unfounded, and Prabowo was placed on leave due to stress.

Prabowo, on the other hand, laughed and denied these claims. He dismissed it as nonsensical for an officer with only the rank of captain to lead a unit and fight to kidnap a general. In addition, he reacted calmly, saying that every time a new book comes out, new charges of coup d'état are levied against him, and left the conclusion for people to make their own decisions.

Prabowo once again clashed with General Murdani ahead of the 1988 National Consultative Assembly (MPR) general meeting. At the time, there were widespread rumors that Murdani was planning to use his position as military commander to secure support from the military faction and then run for vice president of the Suharto government. Prabowo reported this to Suharto, who accepted his report, dismissed Murdani and appointed Trier Sutrisno as the new military commander. Afterwards, the vice-presidential position went to Sudarmono. Murdani's dismissal raised concerns about a coup at one point, but it did not lead to an actual coup. Although the coup did not occur, it was evidence that Prabowo's influence was rapidly rising in the decision-making process of the military and Suharto, including Murdani's ousting.

Between 1997 and 1998, 'Team Mawar' members of the Indonesian Army's Special Operations Command, commanded by Prabowo, kidnapped at least 22 pro-democracy activists mainly in Jakarta. Of these, 9 were released, but 13 are still missing. In 1999, a military court found 11 members of Team Mawar guilty. However, they all escaped imprisonment through an appeal to the Supreme Court, and all but one were able to remain in the military.

In September 2020, then-Defense Minister Prabowo appointed two active-duty brigadier generals from Tim Mawar to senior positions in the Ministry of Defense, with the approval of President Joko Widodo . Amnesty International strongly criticized the President and National Assembly, saying they promised to investigate the case of missing activists but instead placed suspects in key positions of power. In addition, immediately after Prabowo took office as president, two additional members from Team Mawar were appointed to key positions, namely the Director of the National Cybersecurity Agency and the Director-General of the National Intelligence Service (BIN), respectively.

On September 18, 2017, Prabowo gave a speech warning that Indonesia could collapse by 2030 at a book concert on political economy theory written by his father. He claimed, "According to a foreign research report, it is declared that the Republic of Indonesia will disappear in 2030," but it turned out that the report he was referring to was a military science fiction novel, and he was humiliated. It was a book called “Ghost Fleet,” a military science fiction novel published by American political scientists Peter W. Singer and August Cole in 2015, and the original author, Peter W. Singer, said he was very embarrassed when he heard about this.

In November 2018, while campaigning for an election in Boyolari, Central Java, he was embroiled in controversy after making disparaging remarks about the appearance of local residents. Prabowo listed the names of luxury hotels in Jakarta and made the most outrageous statement to his supporters, saying, "You may not be able to pronounce the names of these hotels, but I'm sure you've never been in them. If you try to go in, you'll probably be kicked out. That's because you don't look like a rich person and you're just a boyorard . " Angry Boyolari residents overwhelmingly voted for candidate Joko Widodo during the 2019 presidential election , and did not receive a single vote at some polling stations. In the 2024 presidential election, he won the entire Central Java province, but suffered a crushing defeat again in the Boyolari region.

On December 23, 2018, in a speech held in Solo, Central Java, he became the subject of ridicule by mistakenly referring to Haiti , an island nation in the Caribbean, as an African country. At the time, he said that the government was leaking national wealth overseas, and said, "If this continues, Indonesia will continue to become poor and end up in the same situation as poor African countries such as Luanda and Haiti , or small island countries such as Kiribati where we do not know where they are located."

On January 17, 2019, at the presidential candidate's first TV debate , he made the absurd claim that the salaries of Indonesian governors were too small compared to the area under their jurisdiction, and that "Central Java is larger than Malaysia ." In fact, the area of ​​Central Java Province (32,544.12㎢) was one-tenth of the area of ​​Malaysia (330,323㎢). As controversy arose, Prabowo's camp gave a lame explanation, saying that they were talking about population, not area.

At the same debate in 2019, Prabowo argued that terrorism in Indonesia is entirely caused by poverty and that the real culprits are non-Muslims disguised as Muslims under the control of foreign powers. Naturally, among the terrorists that occurred in Indonesia in the past, many were not poor, and the overwhelming majority were not instigated by foreign powers.

On December 12, 2023, ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Prabowo was once again in controversy after a video was circulated in which he criticized the words and actions of rival candidate Anis Baswedan and said "Ndasmu etik!" in a Javanese vulgar language at an internal event of the Great Indonesian Movement Party. As the scandal spread, his spokesperson tried to extinguish it, saying it was just an internal joke.

Coupled with his background as the son-in-law of former military dictator Suharto , he is receiving a lot of criticism for his authoritarian ruling style. In particular, there are many suspicions that they are trying to revive the practice of 'dwifungsi (dual function of the military)', which allows active-duty soldiers to hold military command and hold civilian government positions at the same time. The 1998 reform significantly limited the military's influence, and Prabowo, a former soldier in the past when Dwipungsi was rampant, is showing moves to give power back to the military, including attempts to revise the military law.

Prabowo has already significantly restored the role of the military in the civilian sector since he served as Minister of Defense during the Joko Widodo government. The military has been actively involved in government projects that were originally supposed to be handled by the private sector, such as free school meals programs and large-scale farmland reclamation projects, and as many of the cabinet members also have military backgrounds, the perception that the government's direction is moving toward reviving the 'New Order' style practices of the Suharto era is growing stronger.

The most controversial case of cabinet appointments was the appointment of Teddy Indra Wijaya, an active-duty soldier, to the position of Secretary General of the Cabinet, a ministerial level. According to the original law, if an active-duty soldier is appointed to a civilian position or given a role, he must resign or be discharged from the military, which is a direct violation of this law. As criticism poured in, Prabowo revised the Presidential Decree and incorporated the Cabinet Secretariat into the 'Military Secretariat under the Office of the President' rather than an independent ministry. It was a lame excuse that it was not a violation of military law even if Wijaya maintained his status as an active-duty soldier because the Cabinet Secretariat has now become a security and military secretarial agency under the President's Office.

On February 13, 2024, suspicions arose that Prabowo had committed corruption in connection with the project to introduce used Mirage 2000-5 aircraft used by the Qatar Air Force. There were suspicions that the fighter jets were priced much higher than their actual value and that rebates were exchanged in the process. The Ministry of National Defense completely denied this, calling it fake news, and appointed famous Indonesian lawyer Hortman Paris Hutepea. In the end, just before the presidential election, the Ministry of National Defense gave up on introducing the Mirage and instead switched to introducing the French Rafale. In addition, the European anti-corruption organization 'GRECO' (Generation Against Corruption), which was named in the expose, denied that it was aware of such facts, and the momentum of the revelations fell sharply and came to nothing.

I am from a prestigious Javian. Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, a father , was an elite economist who was the best educational in the colonial era , studied in the Netherlands , graduated from Erasmus University in Rotterdam and earned a Ph.D. in economics in 1943 . He has served as the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, the Ministry of Finance, the Minister of Science and Technology, and the Dean of the Department of Economics, Indonesia . Hashim Djojohadikusumo is a Java -based conglomerate .

Former wife of Pravo Wars (marriage in 1983, divorced in 1998) was the second daughter of Suharto . After divorce in 1998, Pravo did not remarry. Children are one son (fashion designer) between the former wife.