And this essay is a record of the one figure who from the very outset refused to enter that performance—who stood outside those rails and ultimately altered the direction of the stage itself: Prabowo Subianto, the Patriot. Yes, only the Patriot is able to match the Puppet King.
The label “puppet king” carries an ironic depth that no other epithet quite matches. In Javanese cultural tradition, the wayang puppet moves, speaks, and appears alive—yet is in truth animated by hands that remain unseen. When a president hailing from Solo, the very heartland of Javanese wayang tradition, presents himself not as the master puppeteer but as the crowned puppet, the irony is complete. Vedi R. Hadiz, in Localising Power in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia (2010), had already forewarned us that the old elites of the New Order era never truly perished — they merely waited for a new vessel sufficiently popular to serve as the face of power. And "sang Raja Wayang", the Puppet King of Solo, was the perfect such vessel: a fresh face, a narrative of humble origins, a reassuring smile—whilst behind the curtain, the old interests continued to revolve without interruption.
The ritual of blusukan that he practised so assiduously — walkabouts to traditional markets, chats with street vendors, photographs alongside housewives at the roadside — was the most sophisticated wayang performance of them all. Every visit was filmed, every expression was crafted, every moment packaged for social media consumption. The cost of producing this image, as various political communications scholars have observed, was far removed from the impression of simplicity it sought to convey. Here lies the most fundamental paradox of a puppet king: he spent vast sums in order to appear to spend nothing at all. And this machinery of image-making did not cease when his term ended — it was bequeathed to his successor, because there was simply no other substance left to sell.
Marcus Mietzner, in Money, Power, and Ideology: Political Parties in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia (2013), explains that Indonesian political parties in the post-reformasi era operate fundamentally on the logic of capital rather than ideology. The Puppet King understood this perfectly. He required no great party; he needed only to become a sufficiently saleable product for any coalition of parties in need of a fresh face to purchase. And from this point began a pattern that would endlessly repeat itself: dependence upon the oligarchy financing his stage, exchanged for access and privilege on behalf of powerful interests concealed behind the curtain. The Puppet King held power, but that power was paid for in ways he never announced to the public.
Jeffrey A. Winters, in his canonical work Oligarchy (2011), provides the most apt framework for understanding this phenomenon: formal political power is the front stage, whilst the material power that truly governs the state operates behind the scenes. The grand infrastructure erected during his tenure—motorways stretching across thousands of kilometres, near-empty airports, seaports that served more frequently as backdrops for ceremonial photographs than as centres of genuine economic activity—was not merely a development programme. It was a wayang performance on a national scale: appearing to move, appearing to live, appearing to work diligently—whilst behind the figures, national debt continued to accumulate and state-owned enterprises bore losses that would eventually fall upon the shoulders of the next generation. And who knew that these projects would become a gold mine for building a dynasty with the ambition of making Indonesia like North Korea?
Eve Warburton, in her article “Jokowi and the New Developmentalism” published in the Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies (2016), notes that the developmental model of this era prioritised physical speed and visibility over fiscal sustainability. These projects existed not solely because the people needed them, but because the narrative required them — a narrative that could be photographed, rendered into infographics, and distributed across social media as proof of “real work”. Ironically, not one other significant opposition figure dared to consistently question the fiscal sustainability concealed beneath that euphoria — save Prabowo, the Patriot, who continued to voice concern about the nation’s readiness for a global storm even as the celebrations were at their height.
Political dynasty-building is the most conspicuous crown of a puppet king. When the throne began to be prepared for his descendants — when his children and in-laws were positioned in strategic offices, when political parties competed to lay red carpets before the ruling family — the performance could no longer be called democracy with a straight face. The more attentive public began to see what was truly unfolding: this was not a democratic succession; it was the inheritance of a throne, wrapped in the procedural garments of an election. And amidst this entire process, opposition figures fell one by one into compliance, into silence, or even into open support — all save one.
Edward Aspinall and Ward Berenschot, in Democracy for Sale: Elections, Clientelism, and the State in Indonesia (2019), dissect how Indonesian elections more frequently function as mechanisms of legitimation for pre-existing clientelistic networks than as arenas of genuine free choice. Within this logic, an incumbent possessing access to state power, the national budget, and a network of loyalists dispersed to the most remote corners of the archipelago holds a structural advantage that is almost impossible to overcome. Almost — because there was one figure who had spent decades building his own base of strength, long before that throne was ever erected, and who could be neither purchased nor held hostage by the same means.
Many of Prabowo’s supporters believe that the legal manoeuvring that cleared the Puppet King’s eldest son to stand as a vice-presidential candidate was part of a grand design to ensure that the throne did not change hands entirely. This narrative circulated widely, went viral, and became the subject of heated public debate following the controversial ruling of the Constitutional Court. It must be stated honestly: this is a narrative held by supporters, not a criminal verdict that has attained the force of law. Yet public conviction of this kind constitutes a legitimate part of democratic discourse, and indeed reinforces the argument for why the presence of a patriot who could not be co-opted by the throne was so vital and irreplaceable.
Dan Slater, in Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia (2010), together with Erica Simmons in her various writings on political legitimacy across Southeast Asia, demonstrates that leaders whose support base is rooted in nationalist and military identity tend to build structures of loyalty that are far more organic and durable than those who rely upon transactional machinery. Within this framework, Prabowo’s endurance as a counterweight is not merely a matter of sheer obstinacy — it is because his foundation rests upon something that cannot be purchased with envelopes of cash or the promise of office: the conviction that this nation deserves to be fought for by someone who genuinely cares, rather than merely by a king whose crown was borrowed from others.
PART II: THE PATRIOT WHO REFUSED TO SUBMIT
Amidst the puppet king’s performance that captivated so many of its audience, a figure emerged who from the very beginning refused to become part of that theatre. Prabowo Subianto arrived not as a rival seeking to seize the puppet king’s crown — he arrived as a patriot who questioned whether that throne had been erected upon the right foundations at all. His military background was not merely biographical ornament; it formed a worldview in which the state is an entity to be protected rather than merely a stage to be dominated. And here lies his most fundamental difference from every other opposition figure who appeared and disappeared in turn: Prabowo did not arrive to play within the existing system — he arrived to question that system, from without and from within.
Consider what befell other opposition figures across the two terms of the Puppet King’s rule. Some spoke loudly at first, then gradually softened as positions of office began to be extended in their direction. Some attempted to build opposition fronts, but these were built on coalitions of interest rather than coalitions of principle, and so collapsed before they could reach the root of any matter. Some merely waited their turn — not to change direction, but to receive their portion of the same power. Amidst these ranks falling one by one, Prabowo stood apart: he entered the cabinet not in surrender, but in the understanding that a true patriot does not always work from outside the fortress — sometimes he must enter within to ensure the fortress does not crumble from the inside.
Prabowo’s refusal to countenance the planned rise in subsidised fuel prices was one of the clearest demonstrations of his patriotic character. When that policy was on the verge of implementation and nearly the entire elite circle endorsed it with various technocratic justifications, Prabowo stated his opposition plainly—not purely from a calculation of popularity, but from his understanding that ordinary citizens cannot be made the instrument of fiscal adjustment by a state that had already spent extravagantly on prestige projects. This stance, whatever the debates surrounding it, revealed a rare consistency: that there is a line he will not cross, even under pressure from the prevailing authority.
The grand rhetoric that is his hallmark—concerning food sovereignty, national defence, geopolitical threats, the self-reliance of the nation—is frequently ridiculed by his critics as a style better suited to an age of warfare than to deliberative democracy. But it is precisely there that the essence of his patriotism resides: a patriot does not speak of what is pleasant to hear; he speaks of what needs to be heard. Whilst the puppet king soothed the public with bicycles, fried rice and the names of fish, the Patriot reminded his audience that the genuine threats facing this nation cannot be resolved with small and endearing symbols.
The decision to join the cabinet—described by many as a compromise or even a betrayal of his support base — may in fact be read as an expression of mature patriotism. A patriot does not refuse power because he dislikes wielding it; he refuses or accepts power on the basis of what serves the nation best. By entering the cabinet whilst retaining his own political narrative and base, Prabowo demonstrated that his loyalty was not to the Puppet King — but to the republic that happened at that moment to be led by him.
His emotional style — the sudden tears in public, the anger displayed without filter, the expressions far removed from the composed bearing of protocol — is dismissed by his critics as a sign of immaturity. Yet for his supporters, this is precisely the clearest mark of authenticity. One who genuinely cares about the fate of the nation cannot always conceal his feelings behind a rehearsed smile. There is an authenticity in the emotional outbursts of a patriot that will never be found in the carefully managed composure of a puppet king who has practised for months to appear serene before the cameras.
The narrative of independence he has built — that his leadership must not become an extension of the puppet king’s era, that he stands upon his own mandate from the people — is the most emphatic of patriotic declarations. In many post-authoritarian states, the successor to a leader who ruled by holding the system hostage tends to become merely an instrument of the old power’s perpetuation. Prabowo refused that scenario. Mietzner, in Money, Power, and Ideology (2013), reminds us that ideological consistency is a rare commodity in Indonesia’s fluid and opportunistic political landscape — and it is precisely that rarity which makes Prabowo’s patriotic character a genuine and enduring distinction.
On the question of legitimacy, the Patriot has consistently maintained that his strength derives from votes cast directly by the people at the ballot box, rather than from the blessing of oligarchs behind the throne. This argument must be understood within the context that Aspinall and Berenschot (2019) lay out: that Indonesia’s clientelistic system structurally favours the incumbent. That Prabowo endured as an adequate counterweight within such a system for more than a decade, without selling himself entirely to oligarchic interests, is evidence that his base of support has a different root — an ideological root that grows from conviction rather than from transaction.
The symbols he has chosen — food sovereignty, defence self-sufficiency, national resilience in the face of global crisis — are not symbols designed to endear or to reassure. They are the symbols chosen by a patriot who understands that this nation will always face threats greater than the price of staple goods at the traditional market. If the puppet king offered a bicycle as a symbol of hope, the Patriot offered toughness as preparation for the storm — and in the long run, only one of those two offerings is truly of use.
His frontal style, which ensures that political opponents can no longer operate beneath the radar, is itself an expression of patriotism. A patriot has no need to conceal his position. He need not play in grey areas, need not hold opponents hostage with information, need not dispatch operatives to silence criticism. He need only stand plainly and declare: “This is my position, this is my reasoning, and I am prepared to answer for it.” This is precisely why the Puppet King never truly succeeded in taming Prabowo as he had tamed other figures — because a horse that knows its own way home cannot be led to someone else’s stable.
If the Puppet King of Solo built his power upon bricks of compromise, managed smiles, and invisible networks, then the Patriot built his influence by the opposite means: by standing in plain sight, speaking loudly, and choosing consistency over comfort. Not because he is without flaw — no patriot is. But because amongst all the players on Indonesia’s political stage across the past decade, only he proved sufficiently tenacious, sufficiently independent, and sufficiently deeply rooted to resist being swallowed by the system that sought to absorb him.
PART III: WHEN THE THRONE CHANGES ITS OCCUPANT
The Democracy Index published annually by The Economist Intelligence Unit records a consistent downward trend in Indonesia’s democracy score throughout the period of the Puppet King’s rule. This is not data to be lightly dismissed, originating as it does from an independent international institution with no stake in Indonesian domestic politics. The decline occurred in tandem with a narrowing of civil liberties, a rise in the criminalisation of critical voices, and an ever-thickening wall between power and public accountability. It is against this backdrop that the question of who constitutes the genuine counterweight becomes most pressing: not who shouts the loudest for a brief moment, but who endures long enough without being dissolved by the Puppet King’s mechanisms of control.
Those mechanisms of control operated with a subtlety that was nonetheless entirely effective. Activists who were too critical found themselves confronted with elastic statutes. Academics who spoke too freely felt a pressure that was invisible yet real. Journalists who investigated too deeply discovered that doors had quietly closed before them. All of this proceeded behind the face of a president who smiled perpetually, who was never seen to lose his temper before the cameras, whose public image was one of calm and simplicity. Herein lay the genius of the puppet king: he had no need to display open anger, for the system he had constructed was sufficient to exhaust his opponents of its own accord.
Prabowo’s contrasting style — emotional, open, sometimes erupting without filter — has never been demonstrated to conceal any such mechanism of suppression. When the Patriot disagreed, he said so. When he was angry, his anger was visible. When he refused something, his refusal was plain before the public. There is no room for below-the-radar manoeuvring in a style of leadership of this kind — and for a people who had spent years living under authority that was sweet before the cameras and hard behind them, rough honesty is far more refreshing than refined deception.
The politics of hostage-taking that characterised the Puppet King — permitting his ministers to operate in grey areas, then storing that information as a card of leverage — is the clearest expression of the disposition of power that Winters (2011) describes within his framework of oligarchy: power more concerned with control than with clean and transparent governance. But this strategy has its limits. It cannot operate upon a figure who entered the cabinet not because he required protection, but because he already possessed sufficient political strength of his own to serve as his own shield. The Patriot was precisely such a figure, and that is why he could never truly be held hostage.
Prabowo’s maintenance of critical distance even from within the cabinet is the most demanding expression of patriotism in the context of contemporary Indonesian politics. It is easy for someone to be critical from outside power. It is far more difficult to remain critical once inside. Other figures who attempted this generally failed — they dissolved, merged, and eventually became indistinguishable from the very forces they had once criticised. Prabowo chose not to dissolve, not to merge, and not to relinquish the line of conviction he had built across decades.
Dan Slater and Erica Simmons remind us that durable political legitimacy across Southeast Asia almost invariably has its roots in what they term critical antecedents — the formative experiences and conditions that shaped a leader’s character long before he held formal power. For Prabowo, those formative experiences were decades of confronting a system that continually sought to swallow him: defeat at the polls, accusation, marginalisation, ostracism — yet never truly extinction. Such experience does not forge an opportunist — it forges a patriot. For the opportunist surrenders when the price to be paid grows too high, whilst the patriot grows only more resolute as the pressure intensifies.
Mietzner (2013) observes that parties with a strong personalised base, such as Gerindra under Prabowo, tend to maintain their ideological line with greater consistency than parties built upon the interests of the moment. This consistency — which critics call obstinacy and supporters call principle — is one of the Patriot’s greatest assets amidst Indonesia’s political landscape, notorious for its fluidity, its opportunism, and its readiness to change direction with whatever wind of power happens to be blowing.
If we trace back through the entirety of this drama from the beginning — the throne erected for the puppet king, the oligarchy maintaining it, the democratic space shrinking, and opposition figures falling one by one — that great question must at last be answered: who, from the very outset, refused to become part of this theatre, endured throughout the most intense pressure, and ultimately became the occupant of a new throne by means altogether different? The answer is not a mystery. It is the one figure who could never truly be purchased, co-opted, or destroyed by the system he faced.
Now that the Puppet King has descended from his throne and seeks to ensure that his influence persists through the successor he shaped, the Patriot faces his greatest test: to demonstrate that his leadership is not merely a continuation of the wayang performance with a different player in the lead role. The narrative of independence he has built must be proved not in words, but in decisions — real, courageous decisions prepared to diverge from the former king’s interests whenever the interests of the people demand it.
In the end, history will not remember who smiled most winningly before the cameras. History will remember who stood firm when the system sought to bring him to his knees, who spoke honestly when honesty was the most costly of commodities, and who remained a patriot even when becoming a king would have been far more profitable. Amongst all the players in this long drama, only one deserves to be remembered by that title — not as a puppet king wearing a borrowed crown, but as a patriot whose crown, if indeed he wears one, was earned in a manner that requires no apology.
