Why did Indonesia release the Bali Five now? Its new leader wants to send a strong message to the world

Following weeks of intrigue about a possible deal, the remaining members of the Bali Nine have been released from prison in Indonesia and returned to Australia. The five Australians had served nearly 20 years of their life sentence for their involvement in a drug-smuggling operation.

The legal basis for their return is not yet clear because there is no prisoner transfer agreement between Indonesia and Australia. This is not surprising, given agreements of this sort are notoriously difficult to negotiate, due to the disparities in sentencing between countries for offences like this.

But it is clear the transition from former President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to the country’s new leader, Prabowo Subianto, earlier this year was key to this deal happening now. There are three reasons for this.

A new president looking for credibility

Jokowi was elected to his first term in 2014 after campaigning on a “tough on drugs” platform. He stuck to this pledge throughout his presidency, refusing to grant clemency to drug offenders and encouraging police to shoot drug traffickers if they resisted arrest.

The courts also imposed tough sentences on drug offenders during this time, which meant many people – mainly Indonesians, of course – went to jail for even relatively minor drug offences. This led to huge overcrowding in Indonesia’s prisons, creating horrendous conditions for prisoners and huge costs to the government.

But despite these problems and pressure from many countries – particularly those that had prisoners in Indonesia – Jokowi refused to budge on his “war on drugs” stance.

And so lengthy negotiations to bring the remaining members of the Bali Nine home were doomed to failure while Jokowi remained in office. This was perhaps most notable under Prime Minister Tony Abbott, when two members of the group were executed.

What’s shifted since then is Prabowo’s election in February of this year.

At first glance, it seems surprising he would be the one to give mercy to the Bali Five given his reputation. During his time in the military under the former dictator Soeharto (then his father-in-law), he faced serious, credible allegations of human rights abuses involving troops under his command in East Timor and Papua.

In 1998, the special forces he commanded were also accused of abducting and torturing more than 20 student protesters, 13 of whom are still missing, presumed dead. Prabowo never faced trial, although several of his men did.

When Prabowo made his third run for the presidency this year, however, he made a huge effort to rebrand himself and distance himself from his dark past.

In recent weeks, he has even brought some of the survivors of those abductions into his political party and into his government – once an unthinkable outcome.

And showing mercy to foreign drugs offenders serving heavy sentences is part of this rebranding, but this time directed at overseas audiences.

Read more: Indonesia's new president, Prabowo Subianto, finds democracy 'very tiring'. Are darker days ahead for the country?

Prabowo’s international outlook

Given Jokowi refused to ever contemplate allowing the Bali Nine to return home, this move differentiates Prabowo dramatically from his predecessor. It also casts him in a pretty good light internationally.

Unlike Jokowi, who was much more concerned about domestic matters and was decidedly not a foreign affairs president, Prabowo is very focused on Indonesia’s place in the world.

We saw this during his time as defence minister, when he was active in international forums and even sought to broker an agreement to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. This was unsuccessful, but it reflects the fact he sees himself as a player on the global stage.

That is a very important factor in his decision to send the remaining Bali Nine members home. And they are not the only beneficiaries. He’s also reportedly planning to release a Filipino mother who had been sentenced to death for smuggling drugs, as well as a French prisoner before Christmas.

Clearly, Prabowo sees this as a way of engineering a reset both for Indonesia’s relations with a range of countries, as well as his own reputation. It creates a diplomatic foundation for Prabowo to engage with the international community in a more constructive way. It also removes what has often been an irritant for Indonesia’s diplomacy, particularly when dealing with countries that have abolished the death penalty.

A change in tone from Australia

It also matters that the Albanese government has approached these negotiations in a low-key way, rather than aggressively signalling its position as some Australian governments have done in the past.

There’s little doubt that Abbott’s very public demands that Indonesia not execute two other members of the Bali Nine because Australia had given aid to Indonesia was counterproductive and created a backlash. This sort of megaphone diplomacy directed at Jakarta nearly always backfires.

By contrast, the negotiations that ultimately led to the remaining members being transferred home happened behind the scenes and were quite secretive.

There were one-on-one confidential negotiations between Albanese and Prabowo at the APEC Summit in Lima, Peru, in November. These were followed by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke’s visit to Indonesia to negotiate directly with Indonesia’s coordinating minister for law, human rights and corrections, Yusril Ihza Mahendra.

These meetings were supported by extensive and low-profile work by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Bali Five’s Australian and Indonesian legal teams.

We don’t know the contents of the agreement Burke and Mahendra signed. But the fact it led to the five men returning home, free, on Sunday is reminder this way of operating is far more productive and effective when dealing with Indonesia.

What does this mean for the relationship?

The government-to-government relationship between Australia and Indonesia has been strong for a long time, enjoying bipartisan support because of Indonesia’s strategic importance to its southern neighbour. The weakness has been at the people-to-people level, which has been dramatically hollowed out over the years.

The Indonesian diaspora in Australia is tiny and Indonesian studies at Australian schools and universities have collapsed over the last four decades. In fact, they seem to be on track for extinction.

Australian businesses remain reluctant to test the risks and complexities of Indonesia’s booming economy, despite a free-trade agreement between our countries.

The only real point of consistent engagement between our people is on the holiday island of Bali. Over 1.2 million Australians travel there each year, but cheap package holidays are hardly a strong basis on which to build lasting and meaningful relations between two very different communities.

Many observers globally have been concerned about what type of president Prabowo will be, given his dark past as a military strongman and the fact he has often publicly criticised democracy as the wrong fit for Indonesia. His party, for example, still advocates on its website for a return to the authoritarian 1945 constitution.

But the Bali Five deal makes clear very early in Prabowo’s presidency that he is an outward-looking president who is eager to engage globally. He believes Indonesia punched below its weight internationally under Jokowi, and wants to change that.

So, from a bilateral relationship point of view, this is a signal for Australia that Prabowo is open for business.

However, bets will be off if he does start moving against democracy. That would create profound problems for the bilateral relationship, and even deeper ones for Indonesia.

Tim Lindsey receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He has in the past assisted legal teams supporting the Bali Nine.