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Indonesia’s Prabowo slams West for double standards, lack of moral leadership: ‘we don’t really need Europe’
- Defence minister Prabowo calls for a ‘rebalancing’ whereby Indonesia should learn from countries including China and India rather than continue looking to the West
- The presidential hopeful also claims the EU does not ‘love’ Indonesia given the ‘unfair’ treatment of the country’s products, such as palm oil, in European markets
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Indonesia’s leading presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto has accused the West of having double standards and losing moral leadership, saying Jakarta has been treated “unfairly” due to protectionist measures imposed on critical minerals.
Prabowo, a former special forces commander turned defence minister, said most Indonesians “have sympathy and admiration” for the United States and European Union, but that might be declining due to the latest geopolitical dynamics.
“I grew up in Europe. I maybe know European history better than Europeans. What I’m afraid of is that Europe will lose [its] moral leadership,” Prabowo said on Monday in a foreign policy talk hosted by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies Indonesia.
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“[Based on] the talk within the [Global] South leaders, they say that the West has double standards. The West teaches us democracy, human rights … but the West has different standards and this will be very critical. There’s a shift in the world. Now we don’t really need Europe any more.”
As a nation that “has been looking to the West in the past 50 or 60 years”, Prabowo said there needed to be “a rebalancing”, in which Indonesia had to “learn from other countries in the East such as Japan, [South] Korea, China and India” in aspects including eradicating corruption, improving education, imposing a strong work discipline and displaying national pride.
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