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View all search resultsRivalries, reckonings on the Orient Express of Indonesian politics
Nobody was murdered, but Indonesian Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka finds himself trapped on a speeding political train where shifting allies, bitter family legacies, and unsettled rivalries make everyone a suspect.
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President Prabowo Subianto gestures inside the House of Representatives building, while Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka looks on near him, on the day the President was set to deliver his speech on economic policies and the 2027 fiscal plan in Jakarta on May 20, 2026. (Reuters/Willy Kurniawan)
A
gatha Christie would have enjoyed Indonesian politics. Her Orient Express carried passengers with impeccable manners, complicated pasts and inconvenient memories. Indonesia’s political train carries considerably more passengers, some of whom have changed compartments so often that even the conductor might need a parliamentary inquiry to establish who is travelling with whom.
Fortunately, nobody has been murdered. At least not literally. But the controversies surrounding Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka offer the ingredients of a Christie mystery: old rivalries, shifting loyalties and unfinished accounts from his father’s decade in power.
The oddity is that Gibran was not aboard when many quarrels began. His father, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, was. In politics, as in family businesses, an inheritance may arrive with liabilities omitted from the will.
Some of the oldest memories aboard this train belong to Jokowi’s former political partners. His ascent depended heavily on the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and its chairwoman, Megawati Soekarnoputri. The party helped carry him from Surakarta’s mayoralty to Jakarta’s governorship and the presidency.
His popularity and its political machinery proved an effective partnership until 2024, when he backed Prabowo Subianto and Gibran instead of the PDI-P candidate, Ganjar Pranowo. The party later dismissed that father and son.
Other passengers have less straightforward itineraries. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party had a history of tension with Jokowi’s camp but supported the Prabowo-Gibran ticket. Surya Paloh’s NasDem backed Jokowi, then nominated Anies Baswedan for the 2024 contest, before supporting Prabowo’s administration. Neither party’s past disagreements establish a present campaign against Gibran. In Indonesian coalition politics, a passenger who argued with the driver yesterday may be helping him read the map today.
The Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) brings another twist. It backed Prabowo against Jokowi in 2014 and 2019, remained outside Jokowi’s governing coalition, nominated Anies in 2024, then joined the coalition supporting the Prabowo-Gibran government. Its history reminds us that an old grievance is not a current instruction. Nor does support for a president settle every disagreement concerning his vice president.
