Indonesian anti-terrorist forces recently arrested eight suspected terrorists who officials say were members of a branch of the Jemaah Anshorut Daulah (JAD) terror group located in Lampung, South Sumatra. Police told the media yesterday that the suspects had planned on staging suicide bomb attacks on May 22, the day when the official results of the April 17 presidential election were scheduled to be announced.
Today, a spokesman for the National Police went further by specifying that the terrorist’s plan was to use “people power” — a term used by supporters of Prabowo Subianto to refer to street protests against the government for the alleged election fraud suffered by their candidate — in order to further their goals of causing chaos and dividing the nation.
“[The leader of the group] has read the signs and dynamics that are occurring in the community. They keep pushing their movement. And they will take advantage of that momentum. For example, they will see if there are people power movements in Jakarta, they will destroy them from within,” National Police public relations head Dedi Prasetyo said at a press conference today as quoted by Detik.
According to police, the plan was for the suicide bombers to place themselves among protesters, with the goal of causing suspicions and accusations between supporters of Prabowo and supporters of President Joko Widodo in the hopes of causing a massive clash between the two groups.
Dedi said similar divide-and-conquer tactics were used by terrorist groups in countries such as Syria and Iraq.
Several horrific terrorist attacks in Indonesia have been attributed to JAD, including the May 2018 suicide bombings in Surabaya that killed 28 people. JAD has been linked to the Islamic State and police say their planned attack on the day of the election results was designed to also encourage other supporters of their cause to act.
The term “people power” was popularized by National Mandate Party (PAN) senior politician Amien Rais when he used it to describe grassroots streets protests movements against the government in support of Prabowo, similar to the movements that led to the fall of Suharto’s New Order in 1998.
Prabowo said that he would not encourage people to protest against the government on his behalf but, during a press conference yesterday with foreign journalists he said, “I will not call people to go to the streets, but I am convinced they will. Because, if you look at history, the Indonesian people are not goats. They’re not going to just accept.”
During that meeting with foreign journalists, Prabowo presented to them his campaign’s alleged evidence of massive and systemic election fraud — none of which has been judged to be substantive by impartial observers as it flies in the face of overwhelming evidence, from the same-day quick count polls to the ongoing real vote count, that Jokowi won the election by over 10%.
