Why Indonesians are watching what their ministers wear

An Instagram account called @cabinetcouture_idn built a following out of one simple habit: naming prices. It posted photos of Indonesian public officials and worked out what their bags, watches and shoes cost, including items worn by Meutya Hafid, the Minister of Communication and Digital Affairs. The account is now blocked inside Indonesia. Writing for Indonesia at Melbourne, the researcher Abdullah Faqih argues the block is about power rather than fashion.

The prices explain why people cared. Faqih points to posts that set a Rp60 million Lady Dior bag against Jakarta's minimum monthly wage, which the bag alone is worth almost 12 times over, and to Hafid being photographed with a Bottega Veneta bag reported at around Rp56 million. With the rupiah weak and unemployment rising, a minister's handbag stops being a private choice, because the salary behind it comes from taxpayers. Faqih calls this kind of watching "sousveillance", a term from the researcher Steve Mann meaning surveillance from below: ordinary people using social media to keep an eye on the powerful, rather than the other way round.

This has worked before. In 2023, internet users picked apart the lifestyle of Rafael Alun Trisambodo, a tax official at the finance ministry, after his son posted a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, a Harley-Davidson and a Toyota Land Cruiser online. Public anger pushed the KPK, the anti-corruption commission, to investigate, and Rafael was convicted and jailed over wealth he could not explain. Then-president Jokowi told officials to drop lavish habits, and ministries issued simple-living rules. Faqih reads the new block against a longer record: Indonesia's 2008 electronic information law has been used for years to police what people say online, and he says that squeeze has tightened under President Prabowo Subianto.

Why it matters

If you have ever screenshotted a politician's watch, this case is about you. The tool citizens use to check on officials turned out to be easy to switch off, while the 2008 law still makes posting about the powerful legally risky. Watch whether other accounts of this type disappear too, because that is the cheapest test of how much room Indonesians have left to ask where the money came from.