Crackdowns on Observers Will Not Mature the Nation's Economy
There is something peculiar about the recent orchestration of political communication from the Presidential Palace. On one hand, not long ago Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa, in a half-joking but sarcastic tone, referred to sceptical economists as somewhat “strange” figures. On the other hand, President Prabowo Subianto responded with an even more cynical narrative, warning about the use of intelligence data to monitor anyone funding dissenting voices in public discourse.
The tone chosen demonstrates that this phenomenon is no longer merely a technocratic debate about Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) figures or consumer confidence indices, as Purbaya suggested, but rather a fundamental shift in how those in power view truth in this post-truth era.
Whether acknowledged by the Palace and its assistants or not, we are witnessing what political philosophy terms “securitisation of the economy.”
In this era, criticism of fiscal policy is no longer answered with equivalent counter-arguments but with labels of threats to national stability. Dragging intelligence instruments into economic discourse will be the death knell of deliberative democracy.
When the president openly states that he “knows who funds” observers, he is essentially committing character assassination against the intellectual profession en masse.
Beneath the shadow of threats of “crackdowns”, the public sphere, which should function as a marketplace of ideas, will transform into a field rife with suspicion, unease, and fear. They will no longer merely fear being methodologically wrong but will fear being branded “destructive agents” by the state security apparatus.
In critical philosophy, what Prabowo and Purbaya have demonstrated already manifests as a “panopticon”—a condition wherein individuals feel perpetually watched, leading them to voluntarily censor themselves.
Attempting to pit macroeconomic data against the reality of criticism represents a form of “aggregate tyranny” that is deeply dangerous.
Finance Minister Purbaya appears highly confident in PMI figures at the 53.8 level or shopping indices claimed to be soaring. However, in political economy, aggregate figures often function as a thick blanket covering the hidden inequalities beneath.
Average figures are frequently the most polite lie in statistics, concealing the suffering of lower-class citizens. If national consumption rises only because unbridled upper-middle-class consumption is surging whilst manufacturing sector workers count down to redundancy, then calling the economy “fine and well” is a sociological insult.
Herein lies the “strangeness” Purbaya accused economists of exhibiting. Critical economists are certainly not blind to macroeconomic data; rather, they are fulfilling a moral duty by demonstrating that a yawning chasm exists between figures on paper and reality on the dinner table of ordinary citizens.
The public must understand that criticism of the nation’s economy is never purely about rows of numbers but about ethical choices and how the distribution of power is exercised. When the government claims that critics are driven by particular financial interests, the authorities are engaged in a simplification that demeans the dignity of knowledge itself.
This allegation assumes that objectivity belongs exclusively to those seated in power, whilst intellectual opposition is always regarded as politically commissioned.