By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI – Indonesian Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto, dismissed from the military amid speculation of rights abuses, exiled in Jordan, and once banned from the U.S., is set to become the country’s next President after the unofficial vote count showed him with a significant lead over his rivals in the 2024 Presidential election. The election results will be formally declared shortly after the vote count is over.
Prabowo, 72, was earlier son-in-law to military ruler Suharto and his group was accused of kidnapping and torturing Suharto’s political opponents. He was discharged in the case in 1998. He contested the polls for President twice before, but was unsuccessful. Despite his victory this time, protesters in Indonesian capital Jakarta have held massive demonstrations demanding that he should be stopped from assuming office in the wake of widespread election rigging.
As of February 17, according to real count results from the General Election Commission, Prabowo was leading the race with 58% of the votes, followed by former Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan at 25% and former Central Jawa Governor Ganjar Pranowo at 18%.
During the election campaign, both Anies and Ganjar attacked Prabowo by questioning his human rights record over allegations of his involvement in kidnappings of anti-Suharto activists committed when he was still an Army General. They doubted Prabowo’s fitness to serve as President because of his frequent emotional outbursts and accused him of irregularities in several military procurement projects undertaken while he served as the Defence Minister.
Prabowo managed to overcome these accusations, thanks to outgoing President Joko Widodo’s de facto endorsement of his candidature. Jokowi remains a very popular figure among Indonesians, as 80% of the people in the country are very satisfied or satisfied with his performance as the President.
Jokowi’s endorsement of Prabowo and the appointment of his son Gibran as Prabowo’s running mate are widely considered to be the leading factors which swung most voters to Prabowo’s side in the Muslim-majority country. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, for which it is known as a Muslim nation, but its Constitution does not recognise Islam as the country’s official or state religion.
The domestic and international observers believe that Indonesian democracy is weakening because of the perceived interference of the outgoing administration towards watchdog institutions like the Constitutional Court and the Election Commission. The passage of new legislation which restricts civil rights and freedom of expression for ordinary Indonesians is also a big cause of concern.
Prabowo’s election as Indonesia’s next President is an affirmation of Jokowi’s popularity among ordinary Indonesians after his decade-long focus on economic and infrastructure development. Jokowi has spent his final year in office trying to ensure a landslide victory for his hand-picked successor.
Born in 1951 in Jakarta, Prabowo is the son of prominent Indonesian economist Sumitro Djojohadikusumo. He enrolled in the Indonesian Military Academy in 1970 and after graduation, went on to join the elite Kopassus unit of the military. The General was a close ally of Suharto, having married the former leader’s daughter Siti Hediati Hariyadi, popularly known as Titiek Soeharto, in 1983. The couple divorced 15 years later.
By May 1998, when anti-Chinese riots broke out across Indonesia, Prabowo was leading Kopassus.
The riots, which were allegedly orchestrated by the military in order to divert attention from public anger against Suharto amid the Asian financial crisis and economic collapse, saw looters burn Chinese-owned businesses and carry out a campaign of terror that included hundreds of killings, beatings and mass rape of ethnic Chinese women.
Prabowo was widely believed to have been involved in instigating the riots. The U.S. imposed a travel ban on Prabowo over the allegations, which was only lifted in 2020 after his appointment as Defence Minister. In addition to the alleged abuses in Jakarta, Prabowo has also been accused of involvement in military crimes in East Timor, which Indonesia invaded and occupied in 1975, as well as in the eastern province of West Papua, where conflict has been going on for several decades.
The allegations against Prabowo in East Timor include claims that he led a mission in 1978 to capture Nicolau dos Reis Lobato, the country’s first Prime Minister who had unilaterally declared independence of Catholic majority East Timor even when East Timor was a part of Indonesia. Prabowo was also accused of commanding the special forces team responsible for the so-called Kraras massacre in East Timor in 1983, in which more than 200 people were killed.
Prabowo has denied any wrongdoing in the territory, which finally secured its independence after Suharto’s fall. After his expulsion from the military, Prabowo went into business with his brother Hashim Djojohadikusumo and currently owns a number of firms, including paper pulp and plantation companies in East Kalimantan in Indonesian Borneo, as well as oil, gas, coal and palm oil companies.
He was the wealthiest candidate in the election, with reported assets of more than 127 million U.S. dollars. Apart from his mansion on the outskirts of Jakarta, he owns a guarded mountain retreat in Hambalang in West Java, where he rides thoroughbred horses and has a pet falcon.
During the Presidential campaign, Prabowo sought to reinvent himself, with his team cultivating an online persona of a “cute grandfather” in a bid to appeal to Indonesia’s younger voters, many of whom are too young to remember the Suharto era and make up just over 50% of the electorate. The campaign appears to have worked in favour of Prabowo.
Prabowo also benefited from his association with Jokowi, who remains enormously popular with an approval rating of about 80%. The General twice lost the Presidency to Jokowi, but after challenging the 2019 results in court, sparking nationwide riots that left nine persons dead, he made his peace with Jokowi and joined his Cabinet as Defence Minister.
According to the analysts, while a Prabowo Presidency is unlikely to see Indonesia return to full-fledged autocracy, it could further erode the democracy which the people in Indonesia have been fighting for. Prabowo said during the counting of votes that his victory would be the victory for all Indonesians. He told a crowd of his supporters in Jakarta that he would assemble a government comprising the “best sons and daughters of Indonesia”.
In its observations on the developments in Indonesia, the U.S. has said it is looking forward to the official final tally of the election. “This vote was a testament to the durability and strength of the Indonesian people’s commitment to the democratic process and electoral institutions. We look forward to the General Election Commission’s announcement of the official election results,” U.S. Department of State spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has also sent a congratulatory letter to Prabowo for his success in the Presidential election.
