Prabowo Subianto Djojohadikusumo (born 17 October 1951) is an Indonesian politician, businessman, and retired military officer who has served as the eighth president of Indonesia since 2024. He previously served as the 26th minister of defence under President Joko Widodo from 2019 to 2024. Prabowo is Indonesia's third president to have a military background after Suharto and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and is the oldest first-term president in Indonesian history.
Prabowo graduated from the Indonesian Military Academy in 1970 and primarily served in the Special Forces (Kopassus) until he was appointed to lead the Strategic Reserves Command (Kostrad) in 1998. Later that same year, he was discharged from the military and subsequently banned from entering the United States for allegedly committing human rights abuses.
In early 2008, Prabowo's inner circle established the Gerindra Party. In the 2009 presidential election, he ran unsuccessfully for the vice presidency as Megawati Sukarnoputri's running mate. He contested the 2014 presidential election and was defeated by Jakarta governor Joko Widodo, which he initially disputed. He made another unsuccessful run for the presidency in 2019 against Joko Widodo, with Sandiaga Uno as his running mate and with the support of Gerindra, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), the National Mandate Party (PAN), the Democratic Party (Demokrat), and Berkarya Party. His refusal to accept the result saw his followers stage protests that sparked riots in Jakarta. However, after a heated contest, Prabowo joined Joko Widodo's cabinet as his minister of defence for the 2019 to 2024 period.
On 10 October 2021, Gerindra announced Prabowo as their candidate in the 2024 presidential election. On 12 August 2022, Prabowo announced that he accepted Gerindra's nomination. Prabowo declared victory in the election on 14 February 2024, as early unofficial polling showed him with a lead in the first round of voting. On 20 March, the General Election Commission (KPU) certified the results and declared him as the president-elect of Indonesia. The Constitutional Court (MK) confirmed his status on 22 April 2024. Prabowo was sworn in as the 8th president of Indonesia on 20 October 2024.
Early life and family
Prabowo's father, Sumitro Djojohadikusumo (1917–2001), was originally from Gombong, Kebumen. He was an economist who served as former President Sukarno's minister for the economy and Suharto's minister for research and technology.Ready Susanto, Mari mengenal kabinet Indonesia [Let's know the cabinet of Indonesia], Lazuardi Buku Utama, Jakarta, 2011. Sumitro named Prabowo after his own younger brother who was killed in an incident against Japanese forces in Lengkong, Tangerang during the Indonesian National Revolution.Friend (2003), p. 323 Prabowo's mother, Dora Marie Sigar (1919–2008), was a Protestant Christian of Minahasan and German descent, who originated from the Sigar-Maengkom family in Langowan, North Sulawesi. Her father was a member of the Volksraad of the Dutch East Indies. They were married in Matraman, East Jakarta.
Prabowo has two older sisters, Bianti Djojohadikusumo, who was born in 1946 and Maryani Djojohadikusumo, who was born in 1948. His only brother, Hashim Djojohadikusumo, was born in 1953. Prabowo's eldest sister, Bianti, is married to J. Soedradjad Djiwandono, Governor of Bank Indonesia from 1993 until 1998, whilst her sister, Maryani, was married to a French expatriate entrepreneur, Didier Lemaistre who died in 2018. Prabowo's brother, Hashim, is one of the wealthiest businessmen in Indonesia with assets across the globe from Indonesia to Europe and North America. Due to his father's political exile borne from differences with Sukarno in the 1960s, they lived in self-exile, notably in countries such as Switzerland, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom. During his high school years, he studied at Victoria Institution in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Between 1966 and 1968, the family lived in London, where Prabowo attended and graduated from the American School.The American School in London – 1968: Gateway, p. 32 [yearbook] Sumitro subsequently encouraged his son to attend a military academy. According to peers and observers, Prabowo was strategic and had an appetite for political power.
Sumitro himself came from a political background. His father, Margono Djojohadikusumo, was the founder of the country's first state bank Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI), the first leader of Indonesia's provisional Supreme Advisory Council (DPA), and a member of the Investigating Committee for Preparatory Work for Independence (BPUPK) that drafted the steps for Indonesia's independence.Djojohadikusumo, Margono (2000). Kenang-Kenangan dari Tiga Zaman. Penerbit Indira. Prabowo is the third generation of a family that has served political positions in Indonesia since its independence in 1945.
Prabowo and Titiek have a son, Didit Hediprasetyo, who lived in Boston before settling in Paris to pursue a career in fashion design. While his son has shown little interest in politics, Prabowo is an uncle to Gerindra politicians Thomas Djiwandono, Budi Djiwandono, Aryo Djojohadikusumo, and Rahayu Djojohadikusumo, who will together continue the Djojohadikusumo political lineage.http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/02/06/didit-meets-parisian-haute-couture's-challenge.html
Military career Military academy and service
Prabowo enrolled in the Indonesian Military Academy () in Magelang in 1970. He graduated in 1974 with others who would gain senior leadership positions, such as Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
In 1976, Prabowo served in the Indonesian Army Special Forces Command (Kopassus) and was assigned as the commander of Group 1 (Kopassandha), which was one of the Indonesian Army's Nanggala commando units in East Timor, the former Portuguese territory that Indonesia had invaded the previous year. Prabowo, then 26 years old, was the youngest Nanggala commander. Prabowo led the mission to capture the vice president of Fretilin, who was the first prime minister of East Timor, Nicolau dos Reis Lobato. Guiding Prabowo was Antonio Lobato – Nicolau's younger brother. On 31 December 1978, Prabowo's company found and fatally shot Nicolau in the stomach as he was being escorted in Maubisse, fifty kilometres south of Dili.
In 1981, Captain Inf. Prabowo with Major Inf. Luhut Binsar Panjaitan was sent by the TNI to attend Anti-terror Training in GSG-9 Germany, and after graduate from the course, TNI forming the first anti-terror unit in Indonesia, the Detasemen 81 Anti Teror under the Kopassus, with Luhut as the detachment commander and Prabowo as the vice-commander.
In 1983, sources say that Prabowo commanded the special forces responsible for the Kraras massacres in East Timor. The survivors of these massacres were locked up in a concentration camp guarded by Prabowo's men, where many died of starvation and ill-treatment. Prabowo claimed he was nowhere near the Viqueque district when the massacre happened, and neither the UN nor the government of Timor Leste have ever proffered charges of human rights violations against him. Jose Manuel Tesoro, writing for Asiaweek in 2000, contacted four separate non-governmental organisations including TAPOL in London; Solidamor in Jakarta; the HAK Foundation, headquartered in Dili; and the East Timor Action Network (ETAN) in New York, and they could not provide any eyewitness reports, transcripts of intercepted communications, leaked papers, or anything that could substantiate Prabowo's involvement.
In 1985 Prabowo attended the Advanced Infantry Officers Course at Fort Bragg, in the United States for commando training. In the early 1990s, as the commander of Kopassus Group 3, the now Major General Prabowo attempted to crush the East Timorese independence movement by using irregular troops (hooded "ninja" gangs dressed in black and operating at night) and, in main towns and villages, militias trained and directed by Kopassus commanders. Human rights abuses rose. The Army's 1997 campaign was called Operation Eradicate.
In 1996, Prabowo led Operation Mapenduma in the mountainous terrain of Papua. The goal of the operation was the release of 11 scientific researchers who had been taken hostage by the Free Papua Movement (OPM). The researchers were five Indonesians, four Britons, one Dutchman and his pregnant German wife. Two of the Indonesian male hostages were killed shortly before the rescue operation. The mission involved covert support from British Military Attaché and SAS veteran Colonel Ivor Helberg. Following the hostage transfer, Kopassus under Prabowo began a reprisal campaign against villages perceived to support OPM, and, in one incident at Geselema village, attacking the villagers with a military helicopter disguised as a Red Cross helicopter.
On 20 March 1998, Prabowo was appointed head of the 27,000-strong Army Strategic Reserve Command (Kostrad), that Suharto had commanded in 1965.Friend (2003), p. 325 During his military career, he received the nicknames "08" and "Pandu" () from the Kopassus and the Kostrad, respectively.
Role in the fall of Suharto
Less than three months after his appointment as head of Kostrad, on the first day of the May 1998 riots, Prabowo urged the commander of the Indonesian National Armed Forces (ABRI), General Wiranto, to let him bring his Strategic Reserve units from outside Jakarta into the city to help restore order.Friend (2005), p. 330 Hundreds of men trained by Kopassus (Prabowo's former command) were flown from Dili to Yogyakarta in chartered planes, and then on to Jakarta by train.Friend (2003), p. 331 Prabowo publicly urged Indonesians to join him to fight "traitors to the nation".Friend (2003), p. 315 On the morning of 14 May, Kopassus troops escorted young thugs from Lampung in southern Sumatra into the capital. Thus Prabowo was accused of using his contacts in his former command to import and create trouble, while Wiranto had declined to give Prabowo's current command, Kostrad, permission to quell the existing trouble, in line with classic Javanese tactic to stir chaos to discredit a rival and/or seize power.
Troops under Prabowo's command kidnapped and tortured at least nine democracy activists in the months before the May 1998 riots. In one testimony from Andi Arief, a former detainee told of being tortured for days in an unidentified location, allegedly a military camp where most of their time was spent blindfolded, while being forced to answer repeated questions, mainly concerning their political activities. The abuse included being punched, terrorised physically and mentally, and given electric shocks. Later, in 2009, two of the nine men were candidates for Gerindra, Prabowo's political party, and another served as his media adviser. By 2024, six out of the nine kidnapped (including Arief) have either worked for Prabowo, or backed him for the presidency. Prabowo was also suspected of organising the kidnappings of another 13 activists (all of whom remain "missing") between February 1997 and May 1998.