Krithika Varagur is an American writer and journalist based in Indonesia. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, The New York Times, and The New Republic, among others. (May 2018)
Elections in Indonesia are billed as Pesta Demokrasi, or Democracy Festival. It seemed fitting that in this election’s logistical tour de force, the politician who most exemplifies technocratic competence and moderate rhetoric—Joko Widodo, the incumbent widely known as “Jokowi”—came out on top once again. But in his re-election campaign, he did little to placate disappointed progressive supporters who had hoped for advances in human rights during his 2014 campaign. There has still been no truth and reconciliation process over the mass killings of 1965, nor any accountability for the security forces’ shooting thousands in 1998 during protests that led to the departure of the dictator Suharto. Even two decades later, none of this is far beneath the surface of Indonesian politics.
Today, the “American interest” in Bosnia is extremely murky. It’s not simply that the US has taken a back seat in the Balkans, as it did during the Obama administration, but that Trump, who once brought Bannon into the spotlight, may tacitly approve of Bannon’s European antics, despite their alleged falling-out. Trump, after all, is also fond of nationalist leaders and is hostile to the EU. Bosnia’s eighth postwar general election is scheduled for October 7, and the foreign influence of the aforementioned Americans and an ascendant Russia may tip the volatile state away from the liberal international order to which it was conditionally admitted after the war.
Mahathir Mohamad’s campaign promise was to obtain a pardon from prison for Anwar Ibrahim, the former deputy whom he, Mahathir, had once seen jailed, if his electoral alliance with Anwar’s wife won in this month’s general election. This unlikely-seeming team of former rivals buried their differences in the single-minded hope of ousting the spectacularly corrupt administration of Malaysia’s most recent prime minister, Najib Razak. Their success was stunning, but no one knew what would happen once Najib’s re-election bid was rejected. After all, Malaysia had never before seen a democratic transfer of power.
