Academia
The administration has erected a political hologram over Indonesia’s economic landscape.
President Prabowo Subianto looks on as he arrives on Aug. 14 at the Senayan Legislative Complex in Central Jakarta for the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) plenary meeting, in which he delivered the State of the Nation address and the 2027 state budget proposal. (Reuters/Stringer)
In the current era of the cinematic multiverse, President Prabowo Subianto, perhaps feeling like Wanda Maximoff casting the reality-warping "Hex" over Westview in WandaVision, has created his own political universe. From the podium of the House of Representatives building, he depicts an Indonesia vast, prosperous and fundamentally detached from the economic reality lived by ordinary citizens. In his nationally televised State of the Nation speech before legislators on Aug. 14, he rewrote the reality of Ibu Susanah, a housewife from Bogor, West Java. From the podium, he introduced her as a daily laborer peeling onions for an astronomical wage of Rp 700,000 (US$39.7) per kilogram.
In reality, however, Susanah earns just Rp 700 per kilogram, and she isn't even an onion peeler. She works part-time sewing scrap cloth and washing food trays to make ends meet.
