April 27, 2026
JAKARTA – When The Jakarta Post published for the first time today 43 years ago, its prime directive was clear: to tell stories of Indonesia from the perspective of an Indonesian.
Standard practice around that period mostly revolved foreign correspondents parachuted from the major capitals of the West to report from the “exotic” East, who often wrote with an outlook which literary critic Edward Said deemed “orientalist”.
Or in the words of Karl Marx in the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, “they cannot represent themselves, they must be represented.”
There was indeed an urgent need to tell the Indonesian story from a homegrown perspective in the late 1970s, because soon after the failed coup blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in the mid 1960s, the country appeared to be missing from the map.
It seems that while Indonesia was preoccupied with jumpstarting the economy, the New Order regime of then president Soeharto wanted to keep a low profile so as not to draw the world’s attention to its efforts to crack down on dissent and free speech.
As a result, only rarely did Indonesia catch the world’s attention, usually only a sideway glance when a volcano erupted or a plane crashed from bad weather or poor maintenance.
Indonesia, then a rising middle power with a population over 100 million, deserved better, in terms of media coverage.
After all, only a quarter-century before, the newly independent nation was a force to be reckoned with.
Belgian author David van Reybrouck wrote in his best-selling book Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of Modern World that the birth of Indonesian state was the spark that lit the global decolonization movement that freed dozens of nations in the Global South that culminated in the 1955 Bandung Conference which in turn birthed the Non-Aligned Movement.
Leader of the newly-minted nation Sukarno was one of giants of international politics, someone who was tabloid fodder in the United States for cavorting with the likes of Marylin Monroe but also someone who was comfortable in sharing the stage with heavyweights like John F. Kennedy or Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.
From the get-go, the Post took up the job of trumpeting Indonesia’s strategic role in a world which was at that time gripped by the Cold War.
“Foreign ministry guards against Soviet espionage” the Post plastered on the headline of its inaugural edition on April 25, 1983, highlighting what was at stake for Indonesia in the global competition, if not outright confrontation, between the US and the USSR.
Since that first edition, this newspaper relentlessly covered Indonesia’s trials and tribulations in managing the fallout from the Cold War, advocating for a focus on ASEAN and mediating conflicts in its own backyard.
Indonesia may have suffered setbacks economically in the wake of the Cold War, but on the foreign policy front the country came out unscathed in the late 1990s.
As the Post celebrates its 43rd anniversary today, Indonesia once again appears ready and able, to throw itself into the murky waters of in international politics.
President Prabowo Subianto has spent at least 99 days overseas on 55 official visits since his inauguration in October 2024.
In the past year, President Prabowo has traveled twice to Beijing, twice to Washington and also twice to Moscow, joining a military parade alongside Xi Jinping, signing Indonesia up for US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace and securing an energy agreement with Vladimir Putin.
Never before has an Indonesian leader attempted such a whiplash of foreign policy alignment in the country’s history before, but desperate times calls for desperate measures indeed.
This newspaper is well-positioned to cover Indonesia’s maneuvers on the global stage as they unfold today. In fact, this is what the Post was designed to do when it went to print for the first time more than four decades ago.
We’re committed to doing this and we’re grateful for all of your support.