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Recently, Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan suggested that Indonesia’s economic growth could hit 6 percent in 2024. He argued that this projection is not without good reason, as a digital transformation will be able to accelerate economic growth on multiple fronts. Bank Indonesia (BI) also exuded optimism, when it estimated that this year’s GDP could zoom past 5.1 percent, the reason being that the presidential election was over in just one round, which means that investors can now abandon their cautious wait-and-see approach. 

On Thursday, February 29, 2024, the Constitutional Court (MK) ordered lawmakers to revise the 4 percent parliamentary threshold provision, to be implemented in the next elections in 2029. This decision was made following a judicial review against Law 7/2017 on elections, based on the petition filed by the Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem), which views that the current provision has led to significant numbers of legitimate but wasted votes — votes that cannot be converted into seats in the House of Representatives (DPR). 

It’s been said that history repeats itself. The loser of every presidential election feels so wronged that they go so far as to sue the Constitutional Court (MK) to overturn the outcome. We feel as though the 2024 presidential race is a déjà vu, but with a twist. This time, the losers planned to go farther by using the House inquiry right to look into their broad allegations of election fraud in reaction to Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka’s resounding victory. 

2024 is indeed the year of elections. Not just for Indonesia, but also globally. Some even dub it the “biggest global election year in history”. This is a special year for many democratic governments, because it is estimated that some 4 billion people in more than 50 countries, accounting for half of the world’s population, will go to the polls. As an illustration, of the 10 countries with the largest populations in the world, seven of them will hold general elections in 2024: India, the United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia and Mexico. 

There is an interesting adage to describe elections in Indonesia: “We can know the election results without having to wait for the official KPU [General Elections Commission] decision.” We are of course talking about “quick count” – unofficial results based on statistically-collected sample votes at polling stations. The public always looks forward to this every election, as they can find out who is the victor, just a few hours after polls close.

For the first time in history, the conflict between the Israeli army and the Hamas resistance movement in the Gaza Strip, Palestine, has dragged on, for almost four months. On Saturday morning, October 7, 2023, the international world was shocked by a series of attacks by Hamas, who fired rockets at Israeli territory on the southern Gaza border crossing. 

As a key aspect of its “National Economic Recovery” program, the Government of Indonesia has put in place and developed a national “Food Estate Program” – starting in 2020, coinciding with the declaration of a global health emergency and the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus.

When taking into consideration the amendments to the Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia, it is important to learn from previous experiences. When 1945 rolled around, Indonesia did not yet have any long-term development direction in the form of Garis Garis Besar Haluan Negara-GBHN (Broad guidelines of state policy) that is co-dominated, diverse partitions of songs, and different musical instruments reading the same partitions, which resulted in the production of songs that sound harmonic and smooth. It should come as no surprise that the leadership of the music conductor is an essential factor in the process of translating the partitions of the song into a series of different musical instruments. 

Beneath the bustling markets and vibrant streets of Southeast Asia, a silent earthquake is reshaping the world’s political bedrock. The tectonic plates of global power are grinding against each other, with the United States, the once-undisputed king of the Pacific, now facing a formidable challenger in the form of a resurgent China. This collision of titans sends tremors through the region, and Indonesia, the sprawling archipelago at its heart, finds itself perched on a precipice.

The popular discourse of the day is the likelihood of the Prabowo-Gibran ticket winning the presidential race in just one round, a narrative constantly echoed by the Prabowo-Gibran national election committee, coalition members and various volunteer organizations supporting the No 2 candidate pair. 

The government has a growth target of at least 5.2 percent in 2024, based on the assumption that our Rupiah will exchange at Rp15,000 per US dollar, and we will face an inflation rate of 2.8 percent YoY. Achieving this target is not going to be easy, given the domestic economy situation, where the purchasing power is under pressure and loans are only growing moderately, plus the global economy is expected to weaken further next year.