JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesian political parties have agreed to slash lawmakers’ benefits in an effort to quell widespread protests that have turned deadly, killing at least five people and sparking the nation’s worst violence in decades, President Prabowo Subianto announced Sunday.
The move comes amid escalating unrest over what demonstrators decry as lavish pay and housing allowances for parliamentarians. Protests erupted Monday and boiled over into riots Friday after a motorcycle rideshare driver was killed during a police clash at a demonstration site. Rioters ransacked homes of political figures and torched state buildings, rattling investor nerves and fueling a sharp selloff in Indonesia’s stock and currency markets.
In a brazen overnight raid, looters targeted a house owned by Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati outside Jakarta, according to state news agency Antara. The minister was not present, and it’s unclear how often she uses the property.
Speaking at a press conference in the heavily guarded Presidential Palace, flanked by party leaders, Prabowo said he had directed the military and police to crack down harshly on rioters and looters. He described some of the chaos as bearing “signs of terrorism and treason.”
“Leaders in parliament have conveyed that they will revoke a number of parliament policies, including the size of allowances for members of parliament and a moratorium on overseas work trips,” Prabowo said. He added that security forces must act “as firm as possible” against destruction of public facilities, homes and economic hubs, in line with the law.
The president, who scrapped a planned high-profile trip to China due to the turmoil, huddled with top cabinet members Sunday to assess the crisis. Military units bolstered security at the palace, key ministers’ residences and government sites.
Despite the concessions, student groups — the driving force behind the initial peaceful rallies — vowed to press on. More protests are slated for Monday, with organizers rejecting the announcement as insufficient.
Muzammil Ihsan, head of the All Indonesian Students’ Executives Body, the nation’s largest student coalition, told Reuters the cuts fall short. “Not enough,” he said, adding that further actions were under consideration.
Tegar Afriansyah, chairman of the Indonesian Student League for Democracy, which has protested since Monday, echoed the sentiment. He argued the measures ignore deeper ills like “political oligarchy and an unequal economic structure.”
The violence has claimed five lives so far, per local disaster officials in Makassar, South Sulawesi province. An online motorcycle taxi driver was fatally beaten Sunday by a mob suspecting him of being an intelligence operative. Three others perished Friday in an arson attack on the local parliament building.
Authorities remain uncertain about who orchestrated the shift from protests to looting and riots, which have shaken Southeast Asia’s largest economy. The clashes mark Indonesia’s most severe upheaval since the 1998 riots that toppled longtime ruler Suharto, Prabowo’s former father-in-law.
