Twenty-six years after the fall of Suharto, Indonesia still celebrates Reformasi as its great democratic awakening. The world hails the world’s third-largest democracy, a vibrant, Muslim-majority nation where presidents now peacefully transfer power, local elections fill thousands of posts, and civil society ostensibly thrives.
But beneath the gleaming surface of electoral spectacle and constitutional reform lies a more troubling reality: a democracy that bends, stretches, and appears resilient, yet never truly breaks from the old order’s grip. This is not a failed democracy, nor an authoritarian reversion. It is something more insidious. It is a plastic democracy.
The metaphor is deliberate. Plastic is malleable, durable, and cheap to produce. It can be remoulded to serve new functions while retaining its essential composition. Indonesia’s democratic institutions, regional autonomy, direct elections, constitutional courts, Islamic parties, and special autonomy funds, have been systematically repurposed by the very forces Reformasi claimed to dismantle.
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