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A former Indonesian trade minister who campaigned for the opposition has been arrested in the first days of Prabowo Subianto’s presidency on alleged corruption offences from almost 10 years ago, raising questions about whether the timing is a coincidence or a message from the new administration.
Thomas Lembong, who is well known and respected in Australian political circles, is accused of granting an import permit for more than 100,000 tonnes of raw sugar to a private company in 2015 without proper cross-government consultation and when the country was already in surplus.
Thomas Lembong (centre, green tie) having fun with Malcolm Turnbull and Joko Widodo during a visit to Jakarta’s Tanah Abang market in November 2015.Credit: AP
Lembong was former leader Joko Widodo’s trade minister at the time and later served as his investment chief, playing key roles in the Australia-Indonesia free trade deal and in improving the two nations’ sometimes fractious relationship.
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull named the Harvard-educated investment banker in his 2020 autobiography as facilitating what became a strong friendship between him and Widodo.
But early in Widodo’s second term from 2019, Lembong became a critic of many of the president’s signature policies, including infrastructure spending, nickel downstreaming and construction of a new capital city on Borneo.
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Lembong joined the campaign team of presidential candidate Anies Baswedan – the most strident opponent of Widodo’s chosen successor and election victor, Prabowo Subianto.
Prabowo, who lost presidential elections to the immensely popular Widodo in 2014 and 2019, sought to join the bandwagon for 2024 rather than fight against it. With Widodo constitutionally barred from running for a third term, the ex-general and longtime son-in-law of autocrat Suharto promised policy continuity, making the point – and gaining Widodo’s tacit endorsement – by selecting the president’s eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, as his vice-presidential running mate.
They were inaugurated on October 20, two scions of powerful families. The rapid arrest of such a high-profile critic of the Widodo-Prabowo order has raised the eyebrows of those intently watching the new administration for signals about how it intends to run the world’s third-largest democracy.