Photo Credit: Read Once, Pexels
February 18, 2026
By Muhammad Izzuddin Al Haq and Fransiscus Divo Marcellino Prasetia
The famous line “Java is the key” refers to a policy approach in order to curb political influence, given the large population on Java Island. In 2024, elected president Prabowo-Gibran won in a single round, accounting for more than 58% of the vote, or 96.214.691 ballots. This national victory was built upon their commanding performance across Java Island, where Prabowo-Gibran secured precisely 53,6161,213 votes, which equals to 57.45% of the region’s total valid votes.
In contrast, Anis-Muhaimin garnered 22,061,932 votes overall in Java Island (23.64%), performing the best in DKI Jakarta, where they nearly tied with Prabowo with 2,653,400 to 2,692,433. Meanwhile, Ganjar-Mahfud secured 17,659,394 votes across Java with the strongest showing in their home base of Central Java. However, this number was outperformed by the winning candidate, who accounted for 12,097,190 votes. Comprising six provinces, including the capital, Java island accounts for 93.3 million votes, demonstrating why it remains the decisive battleground in Indonesian presidential elections. With this number, it is essential to note that this electoral dominance is not merely a political fact. Rather, it actively shapes how national development priorities are set. In practice, successive governments continue to concentrate resources and policy attention on Java, not only because of its economic weight, but also because securing electoral support there remains central to sustaining political power.
Colonialism Roots
This electoral arithmetic reinforces a much older development logic inherited from the colonial era, in which political control over Java determined the direction of state investment across the archipelago. This typical electoral arithmetic has long governed Indonesian policymaking under a simple condition, implying that whoever wins Java’s ballots, the resources will follow.
This pattern, inherited from colonial Dutch administrations from the 1830s onward, concentrated on infrastructure investment in Java while treating the outer islands primarily as resource extraction zones. It created economic disparities that persist today. Indonesia’s founding prime minister, Mohammad Sjahrir, negotiated the Linggadjati Agreement, recognizing Indonesian authority over Java and Sumatra. He envisioned a democratic republic, yet the structural Java-centrism embedded by centuries of colonial policy proved resistant to reform.
At the same time, what functions as political pragmatism has escalated into systemic development bias that extends far beyond campaign strategy. It perpetuates the very colonial spatial hierarchy that independence promised to dismantle. The government consistently favors Java political expedients, ranging from disaster preparedness mechanisms that, in recent Sumatran natural disasters, led to finger-pointing at the ministerial level to basic infrastructure development. The Java-centric public policy has weakened the value of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (unity in diversity), indicating that other parts of Indonesia feel structurally abandoned by the state their ancestors helped build.
Disaster Response Inequality
While Java-centrism is often discussed in terms of development planning and political strategy, its consequences become most visible during national emergencies, where unequal institutional capacity and political attention directly shape survival outcomes across the archipelago.
The recent two months in Indonesia, Sumatra, have come with a shocking number, indicating over 900 dead bodies, and approximately 115,000 displaced people have been recorded due to starvation. This issue stems from the delayed response and highly complex bureaucracy in the wake of catastrophic floods and landslides, which have not yet been declared a national emergency by the central government.
Comparing this with the 2022 Cianjur earthquake reveals a contrast in approach with the current approach to mitigating the risk of disaster preparedness. The 5.6 magnitude earthquake struck West Java, and the government declared a 30-day state of emergency within hours. With authorisation from the central government in Jakarta, the West Java provincial administration mobilised resources from its Unexpected Expenditure Fund (Dana Bantuan Tak Terduga) and promptly disbursed IDR 20 billion in financial assistance and IDR 2 billion worth of logistical support to Cianjur Regency.
Furthermore, within six days of the earthquake, more than 325 evacuation centers were established across 15 districts, housing almost 74,000 displaced people. Despite officially killing 335 people, Cianjur received immediate presidential attention and cabinet-level mobilization.
In contrast, the 2025 Sumatra disaster exposed systemic abandonment of outer islands. The Sumatra’s geographic isolation from the central government proved a fatal blow, affecting three provinces simultaneously, with over 570,000 people being displaced, nearly double Cianjur’s toll, despite receiving a fraction of the response speed.
The disparity exposes the structural logic of Java-centric disaster preparedness designed for Java’s geography, not the archipelago’s setting. It is essential to note that Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, with Sumatra facing greater seismic and tsunami risk than Java. Yet, emergency infrastructure investment patterns show that political interests supersede geological risk.
The disparity exposes the structural logic of Java-centric disaster preparedness designed for Java’s geography, not the archipelago’s setting. Despite Sumatra facing higher seismic and disaster risk, institutional preparedness and rapid mobilisation mechanisms remain concentrated in Java, revealing a policy system shaped more by political centrality than by humanitarian necessity. Ultimately, these response failures cannot be separated from deeper weaknesses in disaster preparedness, which remain highly centralised and disproportionately developed in Java.
Infrastructure and Connectivity Gaps
The unequal treatment evident in disaster governance is not an isolated failure, but reflects the same Java-centred development logic that structures Indonesia’s long-term infrastructure planning and regional connectivity policies.
Java-centric infrastructure development, driven by disproportionate funding allocation, makes economic development in regions outside Java and Bali mathematically impossible. Regions like Sumatra, or further areas like Papua and Maluku, are then stuck in a structural cycle of poverty due to poor road quality and low density, as well as limited access to business and investment opportunities.
In 2024, Indonesia’s national budget allocated for infrastructure reached 422.7 trillion rupiahs, the highest in the last 10 years. However, the allocation of these funds remains heavily skewed towards Java and other national priorities, leaving many outer regions structurally underfunded. This imbalance is evident in Sumatra, where the provincial government reported that, as of June 2025, only 56 per cent of roads were in good condition, while 86 per cent of city road networks continued to suffer from severe deterioration. In addition, a significant percentage of this fund is also allocated to one of President Joko Widodo’s most ambitious projects, which is IKN, the new capital of Indonesia, reaching up to an estimated 48.8 trillion rupiahs spanning from 2025 to 2029, which will be through 3 stages.
This infrastructure deficit creates a cycle of dependence that undermines Indonesia’s self-sufficiency. Since 2016, West Kalimantan has imported electricity from Sarawak, Malaysia, through the Trans-Borneo Power Grid with a nominated peak capacity of up to 230 megawatts. This outcome reflects the central government’s continued prioritisation of power infrastructure investment in Java, resulting in a disproportionately low level of investment in Indonesia’s resource-rich and strategically important border regions. Investment patterns generate a compounding effect on the economy, which is an abandonment through extractive exploitation rather than sustainable development.
As it can be seen that fossil fuels, including petroleum, natural gas, and coal, are produced primarily in Sumatra and Kalimantan. Yet the areas that create natural resources, such as Papua, Aceh, and many parts of Indonesian Borneo, and Southeast Sulawesi, are among the poorest and most underdeveloped parts of the country, with all that is left for local people after resource exploitation has left behind barren forests and expansive mining scars.
Looking Ahead
Indonesia’s Java-centric development model has proven not merely inequitable but fundamentally unsustainable as it transforms natural disasters into mass casualty events and condemns resource-rich regions to perpetual poverty. The pattern threatens national cohesion as regions increasingly look beyond Indonesia’s borders for the services their own government denies them.
Decentralising disaster response and infrastructure oversight would dramatically improve survival rates during emergencies and accelerate regional economic development. Research in 2017 reveals that response time is the single most critical factor in disaster mortality rates. It indicates that each day of delay in mobilizing aid increases death tolls exponentially, with economic losses reaching $3billion, yet response capacity concentrates in Java.
At the same time, studies on Indonesia’s decentralised disaster management show that Jakarta-based command centres struggle to coordinate responses across the archipelago, while devolving authority and capacity to the village level enhances local emergency response capabilities. Potentially, this will be able to save thousands of lives annually, given Indonesia’s position as the world’s most disaster-prone archipelago.
A final word from the authors is that Indonesia can continue prioritising political expediency over national equity, or it can finally build the truly united archipelago nation its constitution promises. While Java may dominate Indonesia’s electoral ballots, the archipelago’s 17,000 islands must anchor its development vision in keeping the balance of the nation’s political and economic landscape.
About the authors:
Fransiscus Divo Marcellino Prasetia is an undergraduate student in International Relations at Universitas Katolik Parahyangan and an Analyst at World Order Lab. His research interests focus on non-traditional security, media, and diplomacy through an integrative politics, psychology, and philosophy approach that examines their often-overlooked interrelations.
February 18, 2026
By Muhammad Izzuddin Al Haq and Fransiscus Divo Marcellino Prasetia
The famous line “Java is the key” refers to a policy approach in order to curb political influence, given the large population on Java Island. In 2024, elected president Prabowo-Gibran won in a single round, accounting for more than 58% of the vote, or 96.214.691 ballots. This national victory was built upon their commanding performance across Java Island, where Prabowo-Gibran secured precisely 53,6161,213 votes, which equals to 57.45% of the region’s total valid votes.
In contrast, Anis-Muhaimin garnered 22,061,932 votes overall in Java Island (23.64%), performing the best in DKI Jakarta, where they nearly tied with Prabowo with 2,653,400 to 2,692,433. Meanwhile, Ganjar-Mahfud secured 17,659,394 votes across Java with the strongest showing in their home base of Central Java. However, this number was outperformed by the winning candidate, who accounted for 12,097,190 votes. Comprising six provinces, including the capital, Java island accounts for 93.3 million votes, demonstrating why it remains the decisive battleground in Indonesian presidential elections. With this number, it is essential to note that this electoral dominance is not merely a political fact. Rather, it actively shapes how national development priorities are set. In practice, successive governments continue to concentrate resources and policy attention on Java, not only because of its economic weight, but also because securing electoral support there remains central to sustaining political power.
The data presented in this table are derived from the official website of Indonesia’s General Elections Commission (KPK) and compiled by the author.
Colonialism Roots
This electoral arithmetic reinforces a much older development logic inherited from the colonial era, in which political control over Java determined the direction of state investment across the archipelago. This typical electoral arithmetic has long governed Indonesian policymaking under a simple condition, implying that whoever wins Java’s ballots, the resources will follow.
This pattern, inherited from colonial Dutch administrations from the 1830s onward, concentrated on infrastructure investment in Java while treating the outer islands primarily as resource extraction zones. It created economic disparities that persist today. Indonesia’s founding prime minister, Mohammad Sjahrir, negotiated the Linggadjati Agreement, recognizing Indonesian authority over Java and Sumatra. He envisioned a democratic republic, yet the structural Java-centrism embedded by centuries of colonial policy proved resistant to reform.
At the same time, what functions as political pragmatism has escalated into systemic development bias that extends far beyond campaign strategy. It perpetuates the very colonial spatial hierarchy that independence promised to dismantle. The government consistently favors Java political expedients, ranging from disaster preparedness mechanisms that, in recent Sumatran natural disasters, led to finger-pointing at the ministerial level to basic infrastructure development. The Java-centric public policy has weakened the value of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (unity in diversity), indicating that other parts of Indonesia feel structurally abandoned by the state their ancestors helped build.
Disaster Response Inequality
While Java-centrism is often discussed in terms of development planning and political strategy, its consequences become most visible during national emergencies, where unequal institutional capacity and political attention directly shape survival outcomes across the archipelago.
The recent two months in Indonesia, Sumatra, have come with a shocking number, indicating over 900 dead bodies, and approximately 115,000 displaced people have been recorded due to starvation. This issue stems from the delayed response and highly complex bureaucracy in the wake of catastrophic floods and landslides, which have not yet been declared a national emergency by the central government.
Comparing this with the 2022 Cianjur earthquake reveals a contrast in approach with the current approach to mitigating the risk of disaster preparedness. The 5.6 magnitude earthquake struck West Java, and the government declared a 30-day state of emergency within hours. With authorisation from the central government in Jakarta, the West Java provincial administration mobilised resources from its Unexpected Expenditure Fund (Dana Bantuan Tak Terduga) and promptly disbursed IDR 20 billion in financial assistance and IDR 2 billion worth of logistical support to Cianjur Regency.
Furthermore, within six days of the earthquake, more than 325 evacuation centers were established across 15 districts, housing almost 74,000 displaced people. Despite officially killing 335 people, Cianjur received immediate presidential attention and cabinet-level mobilization.
In contrast, the 2025 Sumatra disaster exposed systemic abandonment of outer islands. The Sumatra’s geographic isolation from the central government proved a fatal blow, affecting three provinces simultaneously, with over 570,000 people being displaced, nearly double Cianjur’s toll, despite receiving a fraction of the response speed.
The disparity exposes the structural logic of Java-centric disaster preparedness designed for Java’s geography, not the archipelago’s setting. It is essential to note that Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, with Sumatra facing greater seismic and tsunami risk than Java. Yet, emergency infrastructure investment patterns show that political interests supersede geological risk.
The disparity exposes the structural logic of Java-centric disaster preparedness designed for Java’s geography, not the archipelago’s setting. Despite Sumatra facing higher seismic and disaster risk, institutional preparedness and rapid mobilisation mechanisms remain concentrated in Java, revealing a policy system shaped more by political centrality than by humanitarian necessity. Ultimately, these response failures cannot be separated from deeper weaknesses in disaster preparedness, which remain highly centralised and disproportionately developed in Java.
Infrastructure and Connectivity Gaps
The unequal treatment evident in disaster governance is not an isolated failure, but reflects the same Java-centred development logic that structures Indonesia’s long-term infrastructure planning and regional connectivity policies.
Java-centric infrastructure development, driven by disproportionate funding allocation, makes economic development in regions outside Java and Bali mathematically impossible. Regions like Sumatra, or further areas like Papua and Maluku, are then stuck in a structural cycle of poverty due to poor road quality and low density, as well as limited access to business and investment opportunities.
In 2024, Indonesia’s national budget allocated for infrastructure reached 422.7 trillion rupiahs, the highest in the last 10 years. However, the allocation of these funds remains heavily skewed towards Java and other national priorities, leaving many outer regions structurally underfunded. This imbalance is evident in Sumatra, where the provincial government reported that, as of June 2025, only 56 per cent of roads were in good condition, while 86 per cent of city road networks continued to suffer from severe deterioration. In addition, a significant percentage of this fund is also allocated to one of President Joko Widodo’s most ambitious projects, which is IKN, the new capital of Indonesia, reaching up to an estimated 48.8 trillion rupiahs spanning from 2025 to 2029, which will be through 3 stages.
This infrastructure deficit creates a cycle of dependence that undermines Indonesia’s self-sufficiency. Since 2016, West Kalimantan has imported electricity from Sarawak, Malaysia, through the Trans-Borneo Power Grid with a nominated peak capacity of up to 230 megawatts. This outcome reflects the central government’s continued prioritisation of power infrastructure investment in Java, resulting in a disproportionately low level of investment in Indonesia’s resource-rich and strategically important border regions. Investment patterns generate a compounding effect on the economy, which is an abandonment through extractive exploitation rather than sustainable development.
As it can be seen that fossil fuels, including petroleum, natural gas, and coal, are produced primarily in Sumatra and Kalimantan. Yet the areas that create natural resources, such as Papua, Aceh, and many parts of Indonesian Borneo, and Southeast Sulawesi, are among the poorest and most underdeveloped parts of the country, with all that is left for local people after resource exploitation has left behind barren forests and expansive mining scars.
Looking Ahead
Indonesia’s Java-centric development model has proven not merely inequitable but fundamentally unsustainable as it transforms natural disasters into mass casualty events and condemns resource-rich regions to perpetual poverty. The pattern threatens national cohesion as regions increasingly look beyond Indonesia’s borders for the services their own government denies them.
Decentralising disaster response and infrastructure oversight would dramatically improve survival rates during emergencies and accelerate regional economic development. Research in 2017 reveals that response time is the single most critical factor in disaster mortality rates. It indicates that each day of delay in mobilizing aid increases death tolls exponentially, with economic losses reaching $3billion, yet response capacity concentrates in Java.
At the same time, studies on Indonesia’s decentralised disaster management show that Jakarta-based command centres struggle to coordinate responses across the archipelago, while devolving authority and capacity to the village level enhances local emergency response capabilities. Potentially, this will be able to save thousands of lives annually, given Indonesia’s position as the world’s most disaster-prone archipelago.
A final word from the authors is that Indonesia can continue prioritising political expediency over national equity, or it can finally build the truly united archipelago nation its constitution promises. While Java may dominate Indonesia’s electoral ballots, the archipelago’s 17,000 islands must anchor its development vision in keeping the balance of the nation’s political and economic landscape.
About the authors:
Muhammad Izzuddin Al Haq is an undergraduate student of International Affairs Management at the School of International Studies, Universiti Utara Malaysia. He is currently a Cadet Researcher at the Asian Institute of International Affairs and Diplomacy (AIIAD) of Universiti Utara Malaysia and serves as Director-General of World Order Lab concurrently. His research interests focus on international security and global governance. His analyses have appeared on East Asia Forum, Australian Outlook, Stratsea, Pacific Forum, and others.
Fransiscus Divo Marcellino Prasetia is an undergraduate student in International Relations at Universitas Katolik Parahyangan and an Analyst at World Order Lab. His research interests focus on non-traditional security, media, and diplomacy through an integrative politics, psychology, and philosophy approach that examines their often-overlooked interrelations.
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