Dr. Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir

What can we learn from the COVID-19 pandemic about human rights protection in Southeast Asia? This chapter of the collected edition argues the pandemic has exposed the limits of human rights, both as a normative concept of human emancipation and as a social advocacy approach.

This paper examines the limits of Indonesian civil society activism in advancing democratic politics. This activism, mainly by middle-class reformers, has not only failed to prevent democracy from being hijacked by illiberal interests but also contributed to justifying the deepening of political illiberalism.

The global trend of authoritarianism affirms the failure of civil society in defending democratic institutions from being hijacked by reactionary populist politics. The destruction of an Indonesian anti-corruption body that happened under the administration of President Joko Widodo illustrates such a tendency.

This chapter discusses illiberal politics and state development in what many have been understood as Third Wave democracies. Taking the Indonesian experience as primary case study it underlines the importance of understanding democracy in relation to the historical organization of state and capital.

Under the framework of disorder that constitutes Indonesia’s illiberal political-legal system, the public health crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic has become a means to the accumulation of wealth and power. This is evident from Indonesia’s messy handling of the outbreak, which continues to worsen the public health crisis.