Do we like them?Do we like Megawati Sukarnoputri?
Our score: 6 out of 10. A first-woman-president record and years of stated support for women's empowerment, set against the Aceh martial law decision and no clear word of her own on LGBTQ+ rights.
Megawati is Sukarno's daughter. She was the second of five children of Indonesia's first president and his first wife, grew up in the Merdeka Palace, and left university after the 1965 coup attempt. She became the face of opposition to Suharto's regime, and in 1996 the government engineered her removal as head of the PDI party, which led to unrest that left four people dead.
She became Indonesia's fifth president in 2001 and is still the only woman to have held the job. The big stain is Aceh: a Jakarta Post columnist notes she pledged in 1999 that Aceh would not see bloodshed, then declared martial law there in 2003. He cites a 2016 Komnas HAM report on what happened to villagers at Jambo Keupok in May 2003, just before the military operations she ordered, and argues she carries moral responsibility. That is his argument, not a court finding, and the piece carries no response from her.
On the harm check, there is a gap. We found no words of her own against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the climate, and she has spoken up on women's empowerment. A 2018 report has PDI-P official Ahmad Basarah saying the party would firmly reject same-sex marriage, but that is the party's line and not a Megawati quote. So the record on LGBTQ+ rights is thin, and that is the asterisk.
The recent story is her on-off relationship with President Prabowo. Tempo reported that Prabowo had reportedly been told PDI-P was linked to the unrest after the August 2025 protests. She answered that she opposed the demonstrations and that he should show evidence. By June she was calling him a friend while saying PDI-P stays outside government, and analysts say PDI-P is the one major party not yet formally backing him.
On integrity, it's a mixed picture, not a stain. Her party's secretary-general Hasto Kristiyanto was sentenced to 3.5 years for bribing an election official, then freed by Prabowo's amnesty in August 2025. The sources we read carry no accusation against her personally. In 2024 she also warned that a third presidential term would breach the constitution and damage the country.
The good stuff is real. In February 2026 a Riyadh university gave her an honorary doctorate, her 11th, and she told the audience that women's empowerment is “not a threat to any values, culture or tradition.” She's also been a woman at the top in a country where that is still rare, and she hasn't been quiet about it.