Prabowo’s unscripted presidency is turning personality into policy risk

Indonesia’s president built a direct, populist style around speaking past institutions. The applause remains, but so does a widening argument about press freedom, economic confidence and dissent.

President Prabowo Subianto’s improvised remarks have increasingly targeted journalists, analysts and critics while dismissing concern about prices and the rupiah. Conflicting polls make his political position harder to read, but recent protests and public mockery show the costs of governing by personal performance.

JAKARTA — Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto has made spontaneity a governing style, discarding prepared speeches for jokes, insults and nationalist appeals that reach supporters directly. What once helped soften the former general’s image is now producing a harder question: when a president treats criticism as disloyalty, does political theatre begin to alter the space in which policy can be challenged?

At a party event last month, Prabowo held up his prepared pages and joked that reading them might put him to sleep. He soon invoked a historical insult for Indigenous Indonesians who collaborated with Dutch colonial forces and applied it to journalists, reporters, analysts and non-government organisations. Indonesian media groups condemned the language as dangerous for press freedom and democracy.

The episode was not isolated. Prabowo has told people worried about rice prices to help grow it, dismissed expert critics with a slang put-down and suggested that a weak rupiah mattered little because villagers did not use dollars. A live stream of another appearance was reportedly cut and journalists removed after he spoke inaccurately about Iran’s nuclear capability, prompting a response from Iranian diplomats.

Ambang Priyonggo, a media and politics academic at Multimedia Nusantara University, describes the pattern as personality politics: simple language, direct confrontation and nationalist identification between leader and public. The danger is not merely offence. If criticism of policy is reframed as an attack on the leader, institutions lose room to correct mistakes before they become expensive.

The public response is mixed. A January Indikator survey put satisfaction at 79.9 per cent, while a separate July survey by Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting recorded 51.1 per cent, sharply down from late 2025. Different methods caution against treating the figures as a single trend, but student-led protests over living costs and spending priorities show that dissatisfaction is organised as well as online.

Claims that presidential speeches alone are moving the rupiah or share market are harder to sustain. Indonesia Stock Exchange president director Jeffrey Hendrik says global conditions and economic fundamentals carry more weight. Finance academic Kam Fong Chan draws a useful distinction: style-driven sentiment may fade quickly, while comments that signal policy uncertainty can command a longer-lasting risk premium.

That is the larger test for Prabowo. A leader can remain popular while degrading the feedback needed to govern well. The immediate controversy is about language; the enduring question is whether investors, journalists and citizens can still distinguish an improvisation from the direction of the state.