In an article for New Mandala, Indonesia politics expert Dr Ian Wilson discusses why violence may have erupted in Jakarta last month, including the role that Islamic political organisation Front Pembela Islam (FPI) could have played.

Many of the questions surrounding who was responsible for the violence that erupted in Jakarta on 21–22 May, following the declaration of President Joko Widodo as the winner of the presidential election, will likely never be answered. Prevailing theories suggest roles for a mix of interests and actors, involving paid thugs, religious extremists, opportunists and mysterious gunmen.

But there is little clarity on which, if any, of the gaggle of contesting elites may have “masterminded” the unrest, or what precisely they sought to gain from it.

In this respect there are strong resonances with the violence of almost 20 years earlier in May 1998, albeit on a far lesser scale.

That some of the key actors involved in both the violence of 1998 and 2019 are the same poses unsettling questions about how much has changed in 21 years of reformasi.

One group that emerged out of the turmoil of 1998 was the FPI. But there is significant conjecture over precisely what role FPI played in Jakarta’s most recent violent episode.

Ultimately, the events of 21–22 May exposed FPI as neither able to bring out large, disciplined, and organised crowds on demand when most needed, nor seemingly able to provide adequate protection from rioters—even in the midst of the holy month of Ramadhan that it has made a name seeking to protect.

To the extent the FPI had a hand in the Jakarta riots, it appears to have made a strategic miscalculation, as the organisation faces an impending existential crisis.

The full article can be accessed from New Mandala.