The Military

Abstract

This chapter examines the powers that the military holds vis-à-vis the president. As a self-perceived guardian of independence and territorial integrity, as well as a key component of the authoritarian regimes between 1959 and 1998, the military is—for many Indonesians—inseparably linked to the concept of authority. Thus, the military's leverage is significant. Nevertheless, Indonesian presidents have considerable authority, which they can use to counterbalance the military's weight. The constitution positions the president as supreme commander of the armed forces who nominates the military chief and appoints the service chiefs. These appointment powers allow presidents to fill the ranks of the military with personal loyalists, giving them an effective control mechanism against potential insubordination. The chapter demonstrates how Indonesian presidents and the military have used their powers to extract concessions from each other within the framework of coalitional presidentialism. This system has stabilized Indonesian democracy as far as the absence of coups is concerned but also explains some of the setbacks of Indonesian democracy from the 2010s on. The chapter offers an illustrative case study, outlining how the military forced President Widodo in 2016 to abort an attempt to publicly discuss the anti-communist massacres of 1965.