Indonesian students protest fuel hike and Prabowo spending priorities

Students filled central Jakarta on Friday, turning a gasoline price hike into a wider challenge to President Prabowo Subianto’s spending agenda. Hundreds marched toward Bundaran HI under the slogan “Heading to Bankrupt Indonesia,” while police and military personnel blocked some protesters from reaching the designated site.

The immediate trigger was the fuel decision. State firm Pertamina raised the price of 92-octane Pertamax on June 10 to 16,250 rupiah per litre from 12,300 rupiah, a 32.1 percent increase. Pertamax Green rose 31.8 percent to 17,000 rupiah per litre, while subsidised 90-octane Pertalite stayed unchanged. The move came after Bank Indonesia delivered an off-cycle 25-basis-point rate hike and as budget data showed the cost of fuel, power and fertiliser subsidies had jumped 208 percent in May from a year earlier.

For the students, the higher pump prices were evidence of a deeper problem: a government they say is spending too heavily on flagship programmes while trimming support elsewhere. Protesters carried signs demanding the fuel increase be cancelled and used the phrase “Wall of Shame” for the cabinet. Yatalathof Ma'shum Imawan said the protest had five demands, including cancelling the free meals and village cooperatives programmes, lowering fuel and staple food prices, and ending what they called wasteful spending. Rafael Arreva said wasteful spending on free meals had created a fiscal situation in which subsidies were withdrawn.

The backlash is sharpening because Prabowo’s economic strategy is already under strain. He took office in October 2024 and has promised 8 percent growth, but investors have been unnerved by his populist policies, including pressure on the central bank and expansive spending on social programmes and fuel subsidies. The fuel protest has become a proxy for a broader test of whether his administration can balance political promises with fiscal discipline.

The free meals programme sits at the centre of that debate. Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa said in May that its budget for 2026 had been cut from 335 trillion rupiah to 268 trillion rupiah. The programme was projected to cost nearly $15 billion in 2026 and was designed to reach about 83 million children and pregnant women. Education analysts have argued that the scale of the spending is crowding out other priorities, with critics saying the money should go to free basic education and lower dropout rates instead.

The presidential communications office said the demonstrations were democratic and that the government listened to public opinion, adding that spending had been cut and the free meals programme was meant to protect public health. Yet the anger on Jakarta’s streets reflected more than a price dispute. It pointed to a widening struggle over whether Prabowo’s priorities are strengthening the state or stretching it too far, too fast.