The recent elections in Indonesia reinforced the durability of many historical trends in political and social conflict and development—specifically, the paramount importance of Islamic civil society organizations in the structuring of political conflict. Although often used to denote violent or rogue activity, ‘political conflict’ is a term used here to broadly characterize the oppositional dynamics within the formal political society sphere—the arena in which parties and politicians contend.

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While Indonesian President Joko Widodo emphasized the importance of unity among the Indonesian people on the latest Independence Day (17 August 2019), developments in East Java – that occurred several days before Indonesia’s Independence Day – and subsequent protests and violence in Papua had the exact opposite effect. What explains the upsurge in tensions between Papua and Indonesia?

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On Sunday 4 August 2019 and Monday 5 August 2019 the capital city of Jakarta, a large part of West Java, and parts of Central Java were without electricity. On Sunday the power outage lasted from around noon to 21:00 pm, an unusually long period, while the following day the outage lasted for approximately six hours (depending on the exact location); also an unusually long period albeit not as long as on the preceding day.

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Yes, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, who recently won the 2019 presidential election and will therefore guide the world’s largest Archipelago in the 2019-2024 period, said the composition of his new cabinet (which is scheduled to be inaugurated in October 2019) has been finalized. But, no, he has not mentioned any names of the future ministers.

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