President-elect Prabowo Subianto (left) speaks to the media on April 24 with vice president-elect Gibran Rakabuming Raka as they arrive at the plenary session of the General Elections Commission (KPU), which confirmed their victory. - Photo: AFP file
JAKARTA: President-elect Prabowo Subianto (pic) has vowed to improve wealth distribution in the country and he will do so by pushing various programs and interventions deemed beneficial for the poor, in a move that analyst say reflects a distinctly socialist approach.
Prabowo, who will be sworn on Oct 20, stressed that the incoming government under his leadership must dare to correct the existing system so that the country’s wealth does not benefit only a small group of people.
He also praised examples set by incumbent President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo in handling inflation whereby the state directly intervened “to protect the weakest”.
“We must ask how Indonesia’s wealth can benefit all Indonesians, not just a small group of people. We cannot rely on trickle-down economics, it’s too slow,” Prabowo said on Wednesday (Oct 9) at the closing of the BNI Investor Daily Summit 2024 in Jakarta.
Trickle-down economics favors disproportionate benefits for wealthy businesses and individuals that typically materialise in deregulation and less tax, as it is believed these eventually help improve living standards for those below and drive overall economic growth.
Prabowo went on to say that Jokowi’s style of intervention was “prudent management”, which suggested he might uphold similar measures when he takes office, since the economy is “not something that the government should leave to chance”.
The president-elect added that he wanted to create a “strong national, united government” that required a “big coalition”.
He explained expanding the cabinet was necessary, even as critics fear it will lead to a bloated administration.
“Unity brings harmony. Harmony brings equilibrium. Equilibrium brings peace. Only with peace can we have prosperity,” said the incoming president.
Prabowo’s brother, and tycoon, Hashim Djojohadikusumo said Prabowo was always “more of a socialist” on account of his late father Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, the last chairman of the Indonesian Socialist Party (PSI) before its dissolution in 1960.
Hashim, said on Tuesday that Prabowo was an admirer of Chinese statesman Deng Xiaoping who led that country from 1978 to the late 1980s.
Deng undertook reforms that opened the Chinese economy to enable it to become the foundation of today’s China, a communist country with a large degree of capitalistic practices.
Hashim quoted Deng’s famous saying that “it doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice”, implying that any economic practices that work are good, be they capitalist, socialist or communist.
“Capitalist, socialist, we mix them up, for what? To eradicate poverty. That’s Prabowo’s goal. [...] How? He doesn’t care, and I don’t care. I’m a capitalist but I support the programmes that many experts view to be populist, socialist. I don’t care, he doesn’t care,” said Hashim.
“The most important thing is our people; [...] we lift them up to prosperity,” he added.
He went on to say that Prabowo was very pro-business and pro-people at the same time, since his flagship programmes were for the people, but from which business can profit.
Hashim said that the free meal programme, despite requiring hefty state financing, would benefit many given the extensive supply chain needed to get it running.
In the first stage, the incoming administration will distribute meals to around 20 million students starting January next year at a cost of Rp 71 trillion (US$4.52 billion) for the entire year.
When running at full scale, it will reach 83 million recipients, including pregnant mothers, and is estimated to cost around $28 billion annually.
Dadan Hindayana, the head of the national nutrition agency, said on Tuesday that at least 5,000 kitchens, called “service units”, would be set up next year, before ramping up to 30,000 units in 2027.
Moreover, Prabowo also plans to build 3 million housing units per year, of which he has promised small businesses will get a larger share than major conglomerates.
Around 2 million of them are planned for rural areas and to be built by medium, small and micro enterprises (MSMEs), cooperatives and village-owned businesses (BUMDes).
The rest are designated for apartments in urban areas, which property moguls can develop.
The president-elect also said that he was reviewing existing subsidy schemes so they can be more “targeted” in the incoming administration by distributing direct aid to poor households, as the current programmes often benefit wealthier people.
Airlangga Pribadi, a political science lecturer at Surabaya’s Airlangga University told The Jakarta Post on Thursday (Oct 10) that interpreting the programmes’ political spectrum will have to wait for their realisation but the free meals, housing programme and subsidy policies seemed to fall under socialist and developmental state approaches, akin to that of the New Order.
He noted that the “socialist tendency” could be found in the manifesto of Prabowo’s own Gerindra Party that emphasises narratives such as establishing a welfare state and criticism of the post-New Order economy of Indonesia, which leans toward “liberal capitalism”.
Aside from his father, he also pointed to Prabowo’s close relationship with the late Dawam Rahardjo, a democratic socialist proponent and Soe Hok Gie, an activist with a heavy socialist leaning with whom he was a close friend in his early days. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
