Author: Luke Lischin, National War College With the announcement of President Joko ‘Jokowi' Widodo's latest cabinet on 23 October 2019, prospects for liberal government reforms have all but vanished. Whether or not Jokowi's appointment of former high-profile members of Indonesia's military and police into cabinet posts was a cunning bid to neutralise his rivals or just a lapse in judgement, the President empowered a national security community set on clawing back influence lost since 1998. Jokowi's inaugural term saw enhanced powers for Indonesia's bureaucracy to regulate civil society on national security grounds. Regulation in Lieu of Statute (Perppu) No. 2 of 2017 amends the 2013 Civil Society Law to empower the Minister of Home Affairs or the Minister of Law and Human Rights to sanction civil society organisations (CSOs) ‘whose principles and activities threaten the sovereignty of the Unitary Republic based on Pancasila' (the five foundational principles of the Indonesian
