Petitions and Semanggi

There is something interesting about this series of presidential elections. After the end of last month, several UGM academics submitted a petition for Jokowi. Then this movement rolled like a snowball, and has now been followed by dozens of campuses, with the majority of the same motives, not officially and only involving a few academics.

After these actions, there were several small mass actions such as those carried out by one or two campuses in Jakarta, targeting the campaign attributes of one of the presidential candidates supported by Jokowi.

For this presidential election, the issue of human rights is still prominent, especially for Prabowo, as candidate number 02. Even though he has participated in four elections in Indonesia, since 2009, 2014, 2019 and now, 2024 which will take place in a few days.

When he was active in the military, the attempted kidnapping of several activists was one of the reasons he was dismissed from military service. Those he kidnapped have since been released. In addition, another interesting thing is that most of those he kidnapped and who dismissed him, all of them now support him in this presidential election.

Also, in the case of student activism resistance in Indonesia, apart from the kidnapping of activists, the most influential thing was the shooting of students and citizens in the Semanggi 1 and Semanggi 2 cases. Interestingly, this took place after Prabowo was no longer serving in the military, and had become an ordinary civilian.

But interestingly, people attribute the two incidents to Prabowo, even though he was not involved at all.