A former military general once banned from Australia over his human rights record is on track to become Indonesia’s next president, according to an unofficial tally.
Almost 205 million Indonesians were expected to take part in today’s poll, which was the world’s largest single-day election.
While vote counting continues, an early unofficial count shows 72-year-old Prabowo Subianto is set to become Indonesia’s oldest leader since the autocratic president Suharto, who was 77 years old when he left office in 1998.
He’ll be joined by outgoing president Joko Widodo’s son, Gibran Rakanuming Raka, who ran alongside Prabowo for vice president.
The pair have not spoken about the quick count tallies but both posted a cartoon of themselves standing in front of Indonesia’s national emblem on their Instagram accounts as the vote counts started coming through.
The result based on ballots counted so far largely reflected opinion polls, which had all but confirmed Prabowo, as he is widely known, was on track to secure the presidency, sucking the suspense out of the count.
But the biggest uncertainty revolves around the size of his victory.
Various media networks are reporting cumulative tallies for Prabowo hovering above the threshold required to declare victory, with a 58 per cent lead in nearly 70 per cent of ballots sampled by unofficial quick counts so far.
These “quick counts” are based on ballots counted at a sampling of polling stations across the country and are conducted by independent pollsters. Official results will take weeks to certify.
Former Jakarta governor and presidential contender Anies Baswedan is trailing behind on a distant second of about 25 per cent of the vote, according to the quick counts.
Prabowo needs a clear victory
Prabowo needs an outright majority above 50 per cent along with at least 20 per cent of the vote in half of Indonesia’s 38 provinces to win.
If he fails to reach that threshold, he would face the runner-up from today’s poll in a run-off election in June.
The most recent polls had Prabowo’s support nudging just above the 50 per cent mark in the days prior to voting.
Quick count tallies show Prabowo has exceeded those opinion poll performances, though vote counting continues.
The would-be president has a murky past
It’s largely old news to most Indonesians, but Prabowo would bring a lot of baggage to the presidential palace.
During his time as a military general, he was accused of human rights abuses in East Timor during Indonesia’s occupation, though he has denied these claims.
He has also faced questions over his time as the special forces general commander to then-president Suharto when, over a span of 15 months, 22 anti-Suharto activists separately disappeared.
Prabowo was dishonourably discharged from the military for “misinterpreting orders” though some reports have suggested it was related to an aborted coup plot.
After a brief period of exile, he returned to Indonesia and — with his businessman brother’s wealth — made an unlikely comeback as a presidential aspirant.
He lost the 2014 and 2019 elections to incumbent president Joko Widodo, who is better known as Jokowi, but instead of accepting the vote, Prabowo contested the results.
In 2019, he even urged supporters onto the streets, resulting in riots that killed six people.
Despite Prabowo’s challenge to the vote outcome, Jokowi still decided to make his former rival a defence minister in his government.
Prabowo will follow in Jokowi’s footsteps
Prabowo has pitched himself to voters as the candidate who will continue the programs of his predecessor, including Widodo’s legacy project of building a costly new capital city in the jungles of Borneo.
The presidential candidate also wants to attract more investment and infrastructure, particularly from China, to further develop Indonesia’s nickel industry, build electric car batteries and keep GDP growth ticking over at around 5 per cent per year.
Prabowo is on record saying he has great admiration for China and its economic growth in recent decades, but he also has a nationalist streak, and again warned on the campaign trail that foreigners are seeking to exploit Indonesia’s natural resources.
As the current defence minister, he’s pledged funding increases for the military and says a strong defence force is needed.
Given how low foreign policy has been on the agenda for Jokowi, it’s likely to get at least slightly more attention under Prabowo.
Unlike Widodo, Prabowo is a much more worldly figure, having lived abroad for various parts of his life, including attending university in London.
He speaks fluent English and also surprised many when he personally proposed a detailed peace plan for Russia’s war in Ukraine during a speech at the Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore last year.
While foreign policy has been largely absent from the talking points of this election, Prabowo has reaffirmed his commitment to Indonesia being ‘non-aligned,’ meaning it does not support or depend on a major power bloc or powerful country.
Despite Indonesia’s growing economic reliance on China, it’s unlikely he’d tilt Indonesia’s diplomacy away from it’s low-key and balanced approach.
Australia might have smooth sailing
It might sound odd but a man who was once barred from entering Australia could turn out to be an easy counterpart for the country’s leaders to deal with.
Prabowo’s human rights record saw him blacklisted from Australia until 2014, but that was lifted before his visit to the country in 2019 as defence minister.
In the past 12 months, he has hosted Australia’s deputy prime minister and defence counterpart Richard Marles in Jakarta.
The pair have worked on upgrading an existing defence cooperation deal, which could include reciprocal base access for training.
It’s still a sensitive issue for Indonesia, but on his last visit to Jakarta, Mr Marles said Prabowo was positive about the negotiations for an upgraded deal.
Prabowo has also been less concerned about Australia acquiring nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS agreement in his public comments, despite countries like China and Malaysia voicing their opposition to the deal.
Activists allege Prabowo’s campaign breached election rules
In the days leading up to the vote, a group of activists released a documentary, which alleged the resources of the incumbent president, Jokowi, were being used to boost Prabowo’s campaign to voters.
Dandhy Dwi Laksono, a prominent Indonesian journalist and the director of the documentary Dirty Money, claimed the government’s support for Prabowo’s campaign was in breach of election rules.
Habiburokhman, who is the deputy chair of Prabowo’s campaign team, described the documentary as slanderous and told the Guardian it was “very assumptive and very unscientific”.
The presidential office has denied Jokowi interfered in the vote.
But hundreds of Indonesian students and activists staged protests on Monday over what they saw as the president’s abuse of power to sway voters in favour of Prabowo.
“Jokowi was once called a new hope, we call him a new disaster,” one demonstrator told Reuters.
Critics have also noted how the president’s son, Gibran Rakanuming Raka, was able to run in the presidential race despite being below the minimum age requirement of 40.
A court headed by Jokowi’s brother-in-law approved a loophole so he could run.
Activists and some student groups say it’s a continuation of a 10-year erosion of democracy under Jokowi.
They point to the hollowing out of an anti-corruption watchdog, and a new criminal code that threatens jail time for insulting the president and military.
Election monitoring groups in Indonesia say there is also less transparency than in previous years about who is funding election campaigns.
