What to know about the presidential wiretapping scandal rocking Indonesia

Published3 hours ago

Authorities are investigating possible treason in Indonesia after a bombshell announcement this week that President Prabowo Subianto's phone conversations might have been spied on.

Several senior figures of Prabowo's administration have been embroiled in the wiretapping scandal, including his chief of staff Listyo Sigit Prabowo - who is not related to the president despite his name.

It is unfolding against what many have interpreted as a widening rift between Prabowo and his predecessor, Joko Widodo - otherwise know as Jokowi - who had thrown his support behind Prabowo's 2024 presidential campaign.

"Listyo's position, as we know, is actually very close to Jokowi," Made Supriatma, a visiting fellow at Singapore's ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, told BBC Indonesian.

"So now it's practically said that they're going their separate ways."

What happened?

Listyo Sigit Prabowo, the president's chief of staff, was arrested on Tuesday along with two senior police officers for allegedly wiretapping President Prabowo.

The three men are suspected of keying phone numbers, including Prabowo's, into the police's official electronic surveillance system - which allows authorities to intercept communications - without following proper procedures, such as obtaining an investigation warrant or case report.

Authorities say the operation was discovered last week after a tip-off from a police officer. But they believe the alleged wiretapping stretches back to 2025, when Listyo was serving as the national police chief.

This could amount to treason, as it involved "sensitive information" that could "endanger the interests and sovereignty of the nation", a spokesperson for the president told reporters on Wednesday.

In Indonesia, treason is punishable by life imprisonment or even the death penalty - though the country has not executed anyone in a decade.

The spokesperson said the motive behind the alleged wiretapping remained unclear.

It was not just President Prabowo who was targeted in the alleged wiretapping operation, either. Other targets included politicians, journalists, NGO representatives and businesspeople, authorities said.

On Thursday evening, police named a fourth suspect: Slamet Uliandi, from the national police criminal investigation unit. But he was not detained due to his ill health after suffering a stroke, according to authorities.

Listyo, who was appointed the president's chief of staff last month, was sacked from his new position shortly after his arrest.

This is not the first wiretapping scandal to have involved Indonesia's leaders. In 2014, several wiretapping devices were discovered at Jokowi's official residence when he was the governor of Jakarta. Former president Megawati Soekarnoputri claimed in 2024 that she had avoided using her personal mobile phone number because she was the target of wiretapping.

Indonesia's police chief Suyudi Ario Seto told reporters on Thursday that the probe into wiretapping was "purely law enforcement and has nothing to do with rivalries or anything else".

But many see it as the latest blow in a disintegrating alliance between President Prabowo and former president Jokowi, who led the country from 2014 to 2024.

Prabowo vs Jokowi

Jokowi had thrown his support behind Prabowo in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, as part of an alliance that ultimately propelled Prabowo to become Indonesia's next leader.

Riding to victory with him was Gibran Rakabuming Raka, Jokowi's eldest son, who became Indonesia's vice president.

Two years on, that alliance appears to be fracturing - even if neither party has confirmed the rift.

Since taking the presidency, Prabowo has shown little interest in pushing ahead with Jokowi's legacy project: the construction of Nusantara, a new capital. Instead, he has focused much of the state's resources on his own flagship programme to provide free school meals across the country.

In a series of personnel reshuffles over the past year, Prabowo has also shifted many of Jokowi's allies into new roles, including long-serving finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati.

Meanwhile, uncertainty also looms over Gibran, Jokowi's son, who is mired in a growing controversy over the validity of his high school credentials, a pre-requisite to run for vice presidency. He now faces calls to be disqualified from his job, on the grounds that he should not have been eligible as a candidate.

The wiretapping scandal and subsequent arrest of Listyo - who rose to the top of the police force in Jokowi's administration, and is seen as one of the ex-president's longtime allies - is now adding to the tensions between Prabowo and Jokowi.

When asked about the wiretapping incident after the court session on Thursday, Jokowi told reporters that "we should all respect the ongoing legal process".

This latest scandal comes during a particularly turbulent period in Prabowo's presidency. His flagship free school meals programme is struggling for funding, parts of Indonesia have recently battled the country's worst wildfires in a decade, and the national stock market faces crisis amid allegations of widespread market manipulation.

Experts, meanwhile, say all this has distracted from the more pressing challenges that Indonesians are facing on the ground - from economic uncertainties to environmental pollution.

In recent months, protesters have taken to the streets to pressure the government on a range of issues such as toxic wildfire haze, corruption, and cost-of-living woes.

"It's like we're living in a country on autopilot," Nicky Fahrizal, a researcher at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Indonesia, told BBC Indonesian.

"Because the way the government operates proves that it's not the people's interests that are being pursued, but rather the interests of individual groups."

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