Prabowo keeps lying on Palestine

This week, at the 28th anniversary celebration of the National Awakening Party (PKB) in Jakarta, President Prabowo Subianto reached for a line he’s reached for many times before. Indonesia gets along with everyone, he said, but backing Palestinian independence is the one thing nobody can talk him out of. The crowd ate it up. Crowds always do, when a leader hands them exactly the applause line they came for. But this isn’t a one-off. It’s a habit. Prabowo has said some version of this line at nearly every opportunity for the past two years, and every time he says it, his government is somewhere in the middle of doing the opposite. That isn’t a slip. It’s a method. Indonesians who […]