Indonesia students plan to stage large-scale demostrations in big cities across the country ahead of the election day in apparent protest against rampant irregularities in governance affairs.

Chairman of the Brawijaya University’s Student Executive Board (BEM), Rafly Rayhan Al Khajri, declined to disclose details of the planned mass protests over security concerns.

"What is certain is that we will respond today's condition very strongly," Rafly told Indonesia Business Post on Sunday, February 4, 2024.

A source within the security authority, however, said that the students planned to stage large scale protests in big cities on February 11, 2024, or three days before the election.

Rafly said the students saw the current condition as no longer tolerable, accusing President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo Jokowi, of abusing his power against law and ethics.

"Today's criticism is not sudden, but an accumulation of public discontent at least since 2019,” Rafly said.

“The include the protests against the criminal code, the corrupted reforms, the Job Creation Law, threats of the dual function of the Indonesian military and police, and the Constitutional Court’s ruling number 90 that paves the way for the president’s son to secure a vice presidential ticket in the 2024 presidential election," he said.

He cited that those government policies did not involve public participation in their decision making proccess and that as a head of state and head of the governmen, Jokowi was fully responsible for the issued policies.

"It gets worse as Jokowi takes a role that is too far deviating from the law and ethics," Rafly added.

Chairman of the Gadjah Mada University’s Student Executive Board Gielbran Muhammad Noor said some students were also concerned about the current situation such as political dinasty and human rights issue, limited freedom of expression and democracy.

"We also have concerns on the draft revision of the Information and Electronic Transaction Law as there are still articles that supress freedom of expression,"Gielbran said.

Dispersal of Student Consolidation

On Saturday, February 3, 2024 a group of unknown people in plainclothes forced students to leave a consolidation meeting of Jakarta students at the Trilogy University Campus, said Fadhil Alfathan of the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute. Those unknown people threatened the students and requested them not to discuss about the planned demonstrations that will voice for an impeachment against the president.

"They not only threatened the meeting participants, but also head-butted one of the students,” Fadhil said in a statement on Sunday.

The Jakarta Legal Aid Institute and the coalition of NGOs considered the incident was not an ordinary act of crime or thuggery. The repression against the consolidation meeting on the impeachment discourse of the president must be seen as an action with full power interests. It is even strongly suspected that this action was orchestrated or at least condoned by interested parties.

"In many cases, the repression carried out by one group against another has proven to be more than just a horizontal conflict, with direct or indirect links to power interests,” Fadhil said.

“The bitter past experience after the referendum in East Timor and the Ambon conflict showed us that the state has the ability to repress citizens for certain interests. Ironically, it is wrapped in a veil of horizontal conflict," he added.

The Jakarta Legal Aid Istitute and the coalition of NGOS called on law enforcement officials, especially the National Police, to proactively respond to this incident by conducting investigations. The police must be able to reveal this case not only at the level of field actors, but also the mastermind or the intellectual actors of the incident.