Within hours of US and Israeli strikes on Iran, Indonesia's President Prabowo Subianto had made a grand gesture in the hope of securing peace: offering up his services as a negotiator.
Indonesia's foreign affairs ministry even suggested he'd be willing to fly to Tehran to facilitate mediation talks between the US and Iran.
Fresh from pledging thousands of troops to the Trump-led Board of Peace (BoP) last month, Prabowo has tried to insert Indonesia into resolving this latest war.
It's not surprising, given the Indonesian president's clear ambitions on the world stage.
Nearly 18 months into his five-year term, Prabowo Subianto is positioning himself as a South-East Asian leader of consequence, thrusting Indonesia into the spotlight on both sides of the geopolitical divide.
He's been shoulder-to-shoulder with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, as Indonesia expands ties with China and Russia under his leadership.
Meanwhile, he's also been courting the attention of US President Donald Trump, who's praised Prabowo during BoP events as a "tough guy" he wouldn't want to fight.
But Prabowo's international manoeuvres are causing friction at home.
Indonesia, a country of more than 280 million people and the world's most populous Muslim nation, has long been a supporter of Palestinian independence.
Prabowo's presence on the BoP, which has no Palestinian representation, has angered many — even more so since US and Israeli strikes on Iran.
At the weekend, hundreds of Indonesians took to the streets protesting his decision to join, while major Islamic organisations have also voiced their opposition.
A petition signed by prominent Indonesians and civil society groups has demanded Prabowo rescind an offer to send peacekeeping troops to Gaza, calling the BoP a "board of war".
For his critics, the Indonesian president's domestic ambitions have been no less alarming.
Prabowo has been nationalising the economy and spending big on flashy programs, with a rapidly expanding military helping him achieve his aims.
Some say Prabowo, a 74-year-old former military commander who's been accused of human rights violations, is cementing his position as a populist leader.
Senior figures in civil society have told Foreign Correspondent they fear a return to Indonesia's "New Order" era, a highly centralised and militarised government led by the brutal military dictator Suharto, Prabowo's former father-in-law.
"We are in the process of a counter-reformation," Marzuki Darusman, a former attorney-general, told Foreign Correspondent.
He warns Indonesia is witnessing "a re-centralisation of power, which may be necessary to be able to undertake all [Prabowo's] projects.
"They can't be executed without the president himself controlling it," he said. "We are at a crossroads."
At the top of the president's ambitious domestic priorities are his "Free Nutritious Meals" program, known as MBG, and plans to make Indonesia self-reliant in food and energy.
A controversial plan for energy independence
The war in the Middle East and its impact on global oil supply have put Indonesia's aims to reduce its reliance on imported fuel into the spotlight.
Prabowo's government has mandated B40 fuel, a mix of diesel and 40 per cent palm oil-derived diesel, in a bid to reduce its fuel imports.
Palm oil is farmed on highly controversial plantations, with the land often cleared by slash-and-burn fires, which have decimated Indonesia's forests and fauna.
The Prabowo government has begun a crackdown, but not to close the plantations.
It's claiming them as its own.
Prabowo has set up a national forestry task force that has confiscated more than 4 million hectares of land, mostly for palm oil plantations.
Many have been handed to Agrinas, a state-owned enterprise that is now the world's largest palm oil company by land area.
The Indonesian Armed Forces, or TNI, is a crucial part of the task force and is being used to reclaim land from both small and large farms.
The government argues that palm oil companies have been operating plantations illegally, without permits, or that weren't tax compliant.
But in some of these areas, small-scale customary landowners say the military has been used against them too, with soldiers entering community plantations and ordering villagers to relocate.
Indonesia's National Commission on Human Rights (KOMNAS) has taken up a case of thousands of residents in Riau province, who it says are experiencing "fear and trauma" after armed soldiers entered their villages in 2025.
Their community is in a national park that was established in 2004, but some farmers have roots here going back generations.
"This village existed even before Indonesia gained independence," said Masparijat, whose grandfather was born here.
Last year, soldiers visited his farm and issued him an order to leave, which he has not yet followed.
"Our livelihoods, the money to send our children to school, all of it depends on this land," he said.
"In my view, this isn't democracy … this doesn't feel like a democratic country."
KOMNAS has written to the government's forestry task force requesting the military withdraw from Masparijat's village.
Luhut Binsar Panjaitan, a veteran politician who once commanded Prabowo Subianto in Indonesia's elite Kopassus special forces, is now advising Prabowo as chief of the National Economic Council.
Asked about the military being used to seize palm oil plantations from families, Luhut said the government was "trying to manage this well".
"There has been some negative impact here and there, yes, we understand," he said. "But overall, that's the price we have to pay to make this better."
He says many plantations have not been paying taxes, and previous governments were not even aware of how many hectares of land were being farmed.
"Today we understand," he said. "We make billions of dollars from that — good for the people of Indonesia."
Feeding 60 million people a day
The Free Nutritious Meals, or MBG program, was Prabowo's main election promise, helping him storm to power in 2024.
Prabowo says he wants to feed Indonesia's children, along with pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, in a bid to improve the country's high malnutrition rates for children.
Twenty-thousand kitchens are feeding more than 60 million people almost every day — almost on par with McDonald's globally.
"This is not an easy job, but this is our moral obligation, to make sure these kids have opportunities in the future," said National Nutrition Agency spokesperson Dian Fatwa.
"We have to do intervention from the beginning because our target, we can create a golden generation from now."
Since it began 12 months ago, the program has courted significant controversy over cost, governance and food poisoning.
One NGO monitor says 20,000 children have been made sick, many in mass food poisoning events.
"Free meals is not a finished structure, it's a system being built while in use," Dian Fatwa said. "When there is a mistake, we learn."
Critics say the program lacks adequate governance and transparency, with no publicly available list of "foundations" that have been awarded government contracts to set up kitchens.
Many kitchens are run by Indonesia's military and police, while others are reportedly linked to supporters of the president's 2024 campaign.
"There is a phenomenon called the centralisation of the Prabowo agenda," Bhima Yudhistira Adhinegara, independent economist from think tank CELIOS, said.
"The ones that benefit the most are Prabowo's close circles, the ones who supported him during the 2024 election campaign."
It's also expensive.
In 2026, the program is expected to cost about $30 billion, chewing up a large portion of the national education budget.
Prabowo's economic goals and policies have been met with apprehension, with major credit agencies raising concerns over policy uncertainties and a growing fiscal deficit.
"Prabowo wants to develop a kind of pathway for Indonesia's development, almost similar to [Suharto's] New Order era," said Bhima Yudhistira.
"He wants to achieve 8 per cent economic growth, but keep the people silenced … it seems like a version of state capitalism."
Threats to free speech
Prabowo has established 100 new military battalions to be deployed across Indonesia's provinces, with a goal of forming 500 battalions in the coming years.
Since his inauguration, he's faced two major periods of demonstrations across the country.
The first was in March, when his government passed legislation allowing members of the armed forces to hold positions across more government departments and state-owned enterprises.
For many, it was a call-back to a feature of the New Order period and the concept of "dual function", which saw the military as a key player in politics.
Suharto was a brutal and corrupt military dictator, whose regime killed hundreds of thousands in purges, conflict and crackdowns.
He was toppled after mass demonstrations and riots in 1998, which were followed by a period of sweeping democratic reforms known as Reformasi.
Director of Amnesty International Indonesia and protester in 1998, Usman Hamid, said he feels Indonesia is returning to that troubling chapter in its history.
"I would characterise Indonesia now as an authoritarian country," he said.
"I think this has been reflected in the shrinking civil space for protests and public criticism, the absence of political opposition and also the lack of integrity of our elections."
In August 2025, demonstrators again took to the streets, this time over entitlements awarded to lawmakers that were widely seen as lavish.
During the protests, a rideshare motorcycle driver was hit and killed by a specialist police unit, fuelling rage at police and security forces.
Government and police buildings were set on fire, and at least ten people were killed.
Prabowo said the actions of some protesters were crossing into "treason and terrorism".
A Fact-Finding Commission report, compiled by three independent NGOs, found more than 6,000 people were arrested after the protests.
One report author described it as the "largest hunt for activists since the 1998 reform".
Report authors found that while there were systematic provocation efforts and the presence of "hired masses", pro-democracy activists were being "scapegoated".
Last week, four young activists were acquitted after being charged over social media posts that allegedly incited violence toward authorities.
They had spent six months in jail.
One prominent Indonesian rights group called the acquittals an "oasis in the roll back of Indonesia's democracy".
A new criminal code, passed under former president Joko Widodo, has come into effect this year, making it a crime to insult the office of the president.
There are also concerns that Indonesia's history is being rewritten.
In a 2025 ceremony, Prabowo conferred the title of National Hero on Suharto.
He's also launched a new official history books project through the Ministry of Culture, headed up by Prabowo loyalist Fadli Zon.
Historians and civil society organisations have criticised the project's secrecy and the omission of parts of Indonesia's dark past, particularly the 1998 protests.
Fadli Zon rejected claims he was whitewashing Indonesia's history.
"It's written not by me … it's written by historians from all over the country," he said. "1998 is already very clear."
Usman Hamid fears Prabowo's presidency is starting to resemble the Suharto era.
"The rewriting of history, the denial of past human rights abuses, bestowing Suharto the title of national hero, the expansion of the military role," he said.
"I feel like I'm being taken back to my time as a student, the years where I was hoping Indonesia could become a democracy — now we're going back in reverse."
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