THE JAKARTA PROTEST ICON
22-year-old charismatic speaker leads protest movement in Indonesian capital
HE was once a boy scout and member of a patriotic flag-raising team in high school. But with student protests sweeping Jakarta and other cities in recent months in some of the worst civil unrest to hit Indonesia in decades, Manik Marganamahendra has emerged as an antiestablishment icon.
“Today we stand on Indonesian land, on land seized and corrupted by the oligarchy,” he bellowed through a sound system, standing on the bed of a pickup truck.
Thousands of chanting students swirled in front of him, watched closely by riot police standing behind coils of barbed wire.
“If elite politicians can make a coalition, why can’t the people?”
The trigger for the protests was a government move to strip the country’s anti-corruption agency of some of its powers and pass a new criminal code that critics saw as a reversal of social and political reforms that followed the fall of the authoritarian Suharto government in the 1990s.
Rattled by the violent protests, the authorities have delayed the passage of the criminal code, which would have banned premarital sex and penalised insults against the president.
President Joko Widodo said there were no plans to reverse changes to laws governing the Corruption Eradication Commission, which had prosecuted hundreds of politicians, officials and businessmen since its formation in 2002, saying the agency needed better governance.
Students like Manik have been a critical force in the protests, helping to forge a loose network with the disparate groups involved.
Quietly spoken and with a slight frame, the 22-year-old public health student is an unlikely figure to emerge as a leader of the protest movement. He comes from a modest background in Bogor, his father is a motorcycle taxi driver and his mother unemployed.
But Manik has emerged as a powerful speaker and charismatic presence in front of the protest crowds, able to rally and organise the students. He has become something of a celebrity in Indonesia, with local media running stories on everything from his favourite pastime (debating, reportedly) to his love life.
By the end of September, the rallies had grown into some of the largest seen in the country since the 1998 protests that helped bring down Suharto, with the size of the crowds put at more than 52,000 at their height.
The demonstrators have also drawn inspiration from the Hong Kong protests, Manik said.
Like their Hong Kong counterparts, they have drawn up a list of demands, with the Indonesians focusing on the anti-graft agency and the criminal code, as well as the removal of the military and police from government, making companies accountable for forest fires, and freeing political prisoners in restive Papua.
The organised opposition and simmering discontent suggested by the protests could pose a challenge to Joko as he starts a second five-year term, even though he is backed by parties controlling 74 per cent of seats in Parliament, analysts say.
The criminal code, which is championed by conservatives that Widodo has been reluctant to confront, is expected to make a return.