President Prabowo Subianto (front, centre) posing with (back, from left) Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, Taiwan's Apecrepresentative Lin Hsin-i, Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, United States President Joe Biden, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee (front, left) and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol (front, right) during a family photo session of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Lima, Peru on Nov 16, 2024. - Reuters
JAKARTA: President Prabowo Subianto has reaffirmed Indonesia’s support for free and fair trade in the Indo-Pacific, urging global powers to prioritise the greater good amid testy rivalries in the region.
In the past week, Prabowo has been on his maiden foreign tour as President, visiting several countries and meeting with their leaders in a push to build Indonesia’s presence on the global stage.
After visiting Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing and United States President Joe Biden in Washington, DC, Prabowo made the third stop of his global tour in Peru, landing in Lima on Wednesday evening local time to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) Summit.
In his keynote speech at the Apec CEO Summit on Thursday, Prabowo expressed confidence that major global powers could put their differences aside.
“We have at present geopolitical tension, but I’m an optimist in the interests of humanity,” Prabowo said.
“I believe that the leaders of the great powers of the world [...] will always opt for the common good. There will always be rivalry, but our planet has become smaller.”
Prabowo took time in his speech to promote his administration’s priority programmes, including efforts to achieve energy independence through Indonesia’s plentiful renewable energy sources and the effort to develop downstream commodities industries.
The President said the downstreaming initiative would take around US$600 billion to complete and invited foreign investors to contribute. He also vowed that his administration would create favourable policies, protect investment deals and push Indonesia to be active in major global economic organizations.
Prabowo attended the Apec Leaders’ Informal Dialogue the day after, where he called on the group to act as a bridge-builder in supporting member countries’ clean energy transitions and digital transformations. He also pushed for Apec to ensure the benefits of growth were shared equitably.
During the dialogue, Prabowo reiterated Indonesia’s commitment to free trade, sustainability and the principle of inclusivity, a position he reasserted at the end of his visit to Peru.
“We want an orderly and free trade but equitable,” the President told reporters, as seen in a video uploaded by the Presidential Secretariat on YouTube on Sunday morning. At an Apec gala dinner on Friday evening, Prabowo spoke with other leaders, including Biden, Xi, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong of Singapore and PM Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia.
Prabowo’s first Apec outing as President was a “good and effective showing” in the effort to attract foreign investors to Indonesia, according to international relations expert Teuku Rezasyah of Padjadjaran University.
“His speech shows that he knows what he’s talking about, and it helped that he had met with a lot of these leaders either as president-elect or during his ongoing tour,” he said.
The key question, Teuku added, would be whether his administration could finalise these deals, particularly since Prabowo’s political appointees crowded his cabinet.
The Lima summit came amid close scrutiny of tensions between the US and China in the Indo-Pacific, with Donald Trump, who once proposed a 60 per cent tariff on imports from China during his campaign, set to return to the White House in January.
After a two-hour bilateral talk with outgoing US president Biden on the sidelines of the summit, Xi said he would be willing to work with Trump’s incoming administration.
Other factors of South China Sea issue gained attention as well, with Jakarta’s stance on the matter coming under scrutiny.
During a meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, Prabowo and Biden reaffirmed their support for freedom of navigation in the disputed waters, seemingly contradicting Indonesia’s earlier joint statement with China that raised concerns about endorsing the East Asian nation’s territorial claims.
The Foreign Ministry said later that the joint statement did not change Jakarta’s stance on the South China Sea.
Meanwhile, Prabowo maintained that he sought to keep a “good relationship with all parties”.
Prabowo left Peru on Saturday for Brazil, where he is scheduled to attend the Group of 20 Summit and hold bilateral meetings on the sidelines. He landed at Galeao airbase in Rio de Janeiro at midnight on Saturday local time. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
