Prabowo Jakarta protests: two years in, the streets answer

Jakarta is bracing for a tense Tuesday. More than nine thousand Indonesian police officers will fan out across the capital, according to Reuters, as the Prabowo Jakarta protests mark two years since Prabowo Subianto took office. Students from at least two universities plan demonstrations at several points around the city, and city police say the deployment will reach roughly nine thousand five hundred officers. It is a heavy show of force for an anniversary, and it says as much about how the president's second year is ending as it does about Tuesday's crowds.

The marchers are mostly students. The student body of the University of Indonesia said Tuesday it would protest recent forest fires as well as the rout on the stock market, which alongside a weakening rupiah points to what it called the "national economy's fragility." Another campus is expected to join at separate locations, though police said it was unclear how many students would turn out. Greenpeace added its own message to the Prabowo Jakarta protests early Tuesday, draping a banner over a major Jakarta monument that read "deal with the climate crisis, lower cost of living." Officials have not named the rally points, and student groups were still finalizing routes late Monday, keeping police guessing about where the biggest crowds would form. Campus chatter on messaging apps was already spreading meeting times, a familiar pattern from earlier rounds of unrest.

The approval collapse

The timing is awkward for the palace. Polls by Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting show approval falling steadily since late last year, hitting a new low of 44.5 percent this month against 81.2 percent last November. The pollster's tracking shows the slide began late last year and never reversed, a pattern rare for an Indonesian president this early in a term. For a leader who won with a huge majority, the drop is stark. Reuters reports that the public, businesses and investors are all worried about the economic impact of the president's ambitious, populist programmes, the same programmes drawing the Prabowo Jakarta protests to the streets this week.

Prabowo, a retired general, was sworn in on October 20, 2024. Two years on, his government is trying to rebuild confidence on two fronts at once: reassuring markets that the populist agenda will not wreck the budget, and convincing ordinary Indonesians that the agenda is worth the strain. Indonesia's markets have felt the strain for weeks, with the Jakarta index sliding and the rupiah testing lows that make everything from phone imports to fuel subsidies harder to finance. The frustration is not abstract. University students who filled campuses with protest slogans last year are back, this time pointing at haze-choked skies from the forest fires and a market selloff that has dented savings and confidence across the capital, feeding this week's Prabowo Jakarta protests.

A familiar script

The last major round of protests came in August, when hundreds were detained. The memory is fresher still of nationwide unrest in 2025, after police killed a motorcycle taxi driver and several people died in the demonstrations that followed. That history explains the size of Tuesday's deployment. Officers are spread across multiple protest points rather than a single rally, a layout built for a city where the Prabowo Jakarta protests could spring up in more than one place at once. Authorities have not said how long the heavy presence will stay in place, and traffic diversions around the main avenues were already being announced Monday evening. Shopkeepers along the expected routes were told to brace for closures, another sign the city expects a long day.

For young Indonesians, the stakes read clearly. A weakening currency makes imported goods and gadgets costlier, a shaky market hits family savings, and forest-fire haze has closed schools before. The Prabowo Jakarta protests are, at their core, a young generation asking what two years of promises bought them. Whether the crowds behind the Prabowo Jakarta protests grow or fizzle, the polls already told their story: a presidency that began with a huge majority now governing with the confidence of less than half the country.

Reporting by Stanley Widianto; editing by David Stanway, via Reuters and SRN News.