Anti-Extremism Presidential Regulation and the Future of Indonesian Democracy

Amidst various strategic agendas of the new government, from food security and industrial downstreaming to strengthening national defence and expanding social welfare programmes, the government has issued Presidential Regulation No. 8 of 2026 on the National Action Plan for the Prevention and Countering of Violence-Based Extremism Leading to Terrorism for 2026–2029.

Normatively, the birth of this regulation is difficult to question. No modern state can allow the threat of extremism and terrorism to develop without a systematic prevention strategy.

In modern state theory, security is a basic function of the state.

The state not only has the task of regulating social, economic, and political life but also has a constitutional responsibility to protect citizens from threats of violence.

In the global context, policies of this kind are not new.

Changes in the character of threats in the digital era have led many countries to develop more comprehensive counter-extremism strategies.

From that perspective, this Presidential Regulation can be read as part of the state’s efforts to strengthen national resilience.

However, in political practice, security policies almost never appear in a completely neutral space.

Regulations of this kind are always interpreted not only from their legal text but also from the political context, history of power, and patterns of implementation on the ground.

This is where the public’s question becomes relevant: is this Presidential Regulation entirely aimed at strengthening national security, or in the long term does it have the potential to develop into an instrument of political control in the name of stability?

That question is not an excessive form of scepticism. Indonesia’s political history provides ample lessons on how security issues have previously become a source of power legitimation.

In the New Order era, the jargon of “national stability” was not only the foundation of economic development but also a political tool for managing opposition, limiting space for criticism, and controlling civil society dynamics.

Political historians in his book explain that since the early republic, Indonesian politics has had a tendency towards state-centred politics, where the state positions stability and national integration as the primary source of power legitimation.

In such a pattern, differences in political views are often not only understood as democratic dynamics but also as something that needs to be controlled.