What was that Indonesian election for again?

That fear of a democratic comeback for Prabowo - one of the most odious of Suharto's henchmen - galvanised Indonesian progressives in 2014, notwithstanding Jokowi's own entanglements with the legatees of Suharto's New Order era. When Prabowo stood again earlier this year, many stuck with Jokowi for the same reason, long after it was clear that their president was not the reformer many had hoped he would be.

You can only imagine, then, how those voters felt this week when Prabowo accepted the offer of a senior position in Jokowi's second-term cabinet. Amid a process which is already being panned in the Indonesian press for its accommodation of political parties and vested interests, his appointment as defence minister has dominated international attention. As one Australian academic quipped, "What was that election for again?"

Prabowo is a grossly inappropriate choice for the defence portfolio. After Suharto's resignation he was dismissed from the military for organising the abduction and torture of anti-regime activists, and he faces serious questions over his role in atrocities during the occupation of East Timor. Prabowo is ambitious, and nobody knows whether he is joining the government in order to white-ant it, or to inherit it when Jokowi leaves office in 2024. The circumstances of his return to public office are emblematic of the broader pathologies of post-Suharto politics.

Democratic accountability rests upon the idea that the public votes leaders and parties out of office as much as into it. But in Indonesia, ideological and political economy factors encourage oversized ruling coalitions designed to accommodate a swathe of elite factions and social groups - including the notional election "losers."

Jokowi might have exhorted his new ministers not to be corrupt, but he knows that opportunities for rorts are the whole point of these "fat" coalitions. Much of the viability and influence of parties and religious organisations is dependent on their delivering patronage - pork-barrel projects, jobs for the boys, government contracts, favourable regulatory decisions - to their clienteles. The prospect of controlling a ministry and its budget is one reason why, though parties compete vigorously with each other in elections, they then "enter power-sharing agreements that effectively void voters' preferences."

Even when viewed in light of these conventions, and judged by the standard Jokowi set in his first term, the new cabinet is qualitatively worse than those that preceded it. At a time when Papuan grievances are driving civil unrest and observers worry that anti-Chinese prejudice is growing, there is no indigenous Papuan or ethnic Chinese Indonesian in the ministry, and only five out of thirty-four portfolios are held by women, a decrease from Jokowi's first term.

And it's not as if those ministers who did make the cut are an impressive bunch. The new health minister was sanctioned by Indonesia's medical association over his promotion of "brain wash" therapy for stroke patients. Pro-Jokowi media tycoon Surya Paloh had a politician from his Nasdem Party installed as communications minister and now has the luxury of regulating his own media empire. Despite last month's large protests about the weakening of anti-corruption laws, a draconian new criminal code, and the government's persistent failure to discipline industry for its role in Indonesia's forest-fire crisis, forestry and environment minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar and justice minister Yasonna Laoly have kept their portfolios.

This cabinet reflects a renewed atmosphere of ideological conflict between the religious pluralism that has long dominated the political mainstream and the Islamism that is ascendant in an increasingly pious society - and particularly among the urban middle classes who play an outsize role in cultural and political life.

Former national police chief Tito Karnavian, a political ally of the president, has been appointed as home minister, with wide powers over the civil service and regional government. Former general Fachrul Razi will be minister for religion - the first time since the New Order that a military man has held this post. The two will spearhead "deradicalisation" within Indonesia's civil and religious bureaucracy, which moderate organisations have long worried is being colonised by sympathisers of radical groups.

Indonesian pluralists and many westerners will be encouraged by the idea that radicals will no longer be indulged by the state. But those who know what the rhetoric of "deradicalisation" signifies in Indonesia - and who recall what it meant during the New Order - are wary of what a crackdown on ill-defined "radicalism" might mean in practice.

Indeed, what has (re)emerged under Jokowi is a strain of "nondemocratic pluralist" thinking, which sees the threat of Islamism as so acute as to justify restrictions on freedom of association and purges of Islamist sympathisers in the bureaucracy, something which anecdotal evidence suggests has been quietly under way for some time. One need only look to the Arab world, or even the New Order, to see the ineffectiveness of aggressive nationalism - combined with the delegitimisation of Islamist movements and discrimination against their followers - as a remedy for the spread of Islamist ideas.

The new cabinet embodies what has been rotten about Indonesia's post-Suharto politics as well as new problems being created and exacerbated by Jokowi's leadership. It's tempting to hope that Indonesians get lucky with their presidential candidates in the 2024 elections - yet if there's one idea that Jokowi's presidency has put to rest, it's that Indonesian democracy needs a saviour.