Prabowo also re-committed Indonesia to supporting a two-state solution in the Middle East. This was not new either, but his repeated, express undertakings to recognise long-time adversary Israel if Palestine was granted statehood carried not-insignificant political risks back home, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation.
Trump antidote
Though littered with meaningless meaningfuls (“Together we must strive to achieve our hopes, our dreams”, etc.), his remarks were at times powerful and unifying antidotes to Trump’s boasts and bitterness.
This from a lectern-thumping former special forces commander forever brushing off accusations of historical human rights abuses.
Trump spent much of his earlier address berating UN members for their failures to control migration.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Set against Trump, a statesman.
After the so-called leader of the free world had just called climate change a con, Prabowo went about calling it a “reality”.
“As the world’s largest island state, we are already experiencing the direct consequences of climate change, particularly the threat of rising sea levels,” he said.
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“Therefore, we choose to confront climate change – not by slogans, but by measurable and immediate steps. We are committed to meeting our 2015 Paris Agreement obligations.”
Also, unlike Trump and the America First movement he leads, Prabowo emphasised the importance of “internationalism, multilateralism and … every effort that strengthens this great institution [the UN].”
At the beginning of the speech – once General Assembly president Annalena Baerbock eventually got every flapping delegate to sit back down (and then butchered Prabowo’s name) – the Indonesian president launched into a partial recitation of the US Declaration of Independence.
It was the passage about how each man is created equal and endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The creed “opened the way to unprecedented global prosperity and dignity”, he said. “And yet … human folly, fuelled by fear, racism, hatred, oppression, and apartheid, threatens our common future.”
Prabowo did not ad-lib these lines in response to Trump, and Israel’s actions in Gaza would have been top of mind during the writing. Still, they took on a certain hue with Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric still hanging thick in the chamber.
Some will find Prabowo’s platitudes pretty rich. The strong-armed and often brutal activities of Indonesia’s security forces in Papua have been condemned by human rights groups for decades.
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The country also refuses to sign up to the UN’s 1951 Convention and the 1967 protocol on refugees, leaving thousands of persecuted people who have fled to Indonesia languishing destitute and helpless.
Prabowo is facing numerous economic and budgetary problems at home. His signature policy of free school lunches has led to regular food poisoning outbreaks across the archipelago.
Ordinary Indonesians are grappling with cost-of-living pressures and a job pool too small for its politically aware youth. Mass protests across the archipelago last month have cooled, but seem ready to explode at any wrong word or action from Indonesia’s elite ruling class.
Compared to his predecessor, Joko Widodo, Prabowo loves getting out of the country to meet foreign leaders – including Russia’s Vladimir Putin. On foreign soil and with contemporaries like Trump, Prabowo can bask in applause. He just might hope Trump had already nicked off.
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