Do we like Prabowo Subianto?
Our score: 4 out of 10. He has acted on graft inside his own government, but a rights record under fire and large forest clearing in Papua keep the score down.
Prabowo was born in Jakarta in 1951 to an economist father. The family spent years in exile, so he went to school in Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Zurich and London. He came home for the military academy, graduated in 1974 and joined the special forces in 1976. By March 1998 he was running Kostrad, the army's strategic reserve.
Then came the fall. An army Honor Council of Officers found him responsible for abducting pro-democracy activists, and he was discharged in August 1998. In 2014 he told Al Jazeera “I carried out operations that were legal at the time,” and said he was following orders. The outlet also notes thirteen of the people taken have never been found, and that he has consistently denied involvement in their disappearances. After years abroad he founded Gerindra in 2008, lost three presidential races, became defence minister in 2019 and won the presidency in 2024.
On the harm test, we found no words of his own aimed at LGBTQ+ people. But Human Rights Watch says the criminal code that took effect in January 2026 is expected to make adult consensual same-sex conduct a crime for the first time. It also reports public floggings and canings for same-sex relations in Aceh in 2025, under local Sharia rules. That is the legal landscape he governs, not something we can pin on his own statements.
On power and dissent, HRW reports he has put serving military members into senior posts and said he would grow the military to one million personnel. After the August 2025 protests, in which police detained over 3,300 people, he rolled back lawmakers' perks but warned against “treason and terrorism”, which HRW says had no basis. In 2026, police were reported to be looking into complaints against analysts who criticised his government, alleging incitement. We found no outcome yet.
The planet is the other worry. HRW says plantations in the Merauke food project have cleared over two million hectares in Papua, and that UN experts said Indigenous communities were displaced. The government says the project complies with national laws, including on Indigenous rights. In January 2026, HRW reported police dispersed and beat Papuan protesters in Merauke, and said all 11 detained were released without charge.
The fresh news is a graft scandal inside his flagship free meals programme. In June 2026 he fired the head of the National Nutrition Agency, who was then named a key suspect in an alleged corruption probe and detained. Prabowo said he personally ordered the probe and said of corruption, “There are no exceptions.” Acting against your own appointee counts for something, though the scandal is the biggest of his term so far.