JAKARTA—“One round, one round, Alhamdulillah, one round, Prabowo, Prabowo, Prabowo,” a jubilant crowd chanted as the man set to be Indonesia’s next president, Prabowo Subianto, arrived to give his victory speech at a stadium in Jakarta. Some 200 million Indonesians were eligible to vote, and by a clear margin this electorate—52 percent of whom are under the age of 40—chose a 72-year-old former lieutenant general with deep links to the old dictatorship.
Some say he has changed. Others fear his arrival spells bad news for Indonesian democracy, which has already been strained by tacit state support for his campaign. Current President Joko Widodo, commonly referred to as Jokowi, not so tacitly backed the campaign of his former rival. “Jokowi has opened the door to make Indonesia going back to the New Order darkness [under former dictator Suharto],” said Andreas Harsono, a veteran member of Human Rights Watch in Indonesia.
JAKARTA—“One round, one round, Alhamdulillah, one round, Prabowo, Prabowo, Prabowo,” a jubilant crowd chanted as the man set to be Indonesia’s next president, Prabowo Subianto, arrived to give his victory speech at a stadium in Jakarta. Some 200 million Indonesians were eligible to vote, and by a clear margin this electorate—52 percent of whom are under the age of 40—chose a 72-year-old former lieutenant general with deep links to the old dictatorship.
Some say he has changed. Others fear his arrival spells bad news for Indonesian democracy, which has already been strained by tacit state support for his campaign. Current President Joko Widodo, commonly referred to as Jokowi, not so tacitly backed the campaign of his former rival. “Jokowi has opened the door to make Indonesia going back to the New Order darkness [under former dictator Suharto],” said Andreas Harsono, a veteran member of Human Rights Watch in Indonesia.
The most obvious cause of worry is the fact that Prabowo’s running mate, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, is Jokowi’s son. The 36-year-old, who has just over two years of political experience as mayor of Surakarta, where his father started his political career, only became eligible after a last-minute Constitutional Court ruling made an exception to the previous restriction that candidates had to be at least 40.
The state has put its thumb on the scales in other parts of the campaign, too. Corruption investigations into party leaders appeared and then disappeared after they backed Prabowo. Opposition campaigns complained that the police harassed them and pressured people to back Prabowo. And spending on social aid for Indonesians not only boomed but in some cases was even reportedly handed out by people linked to the Prabowo campaign. “Many law professors and other academics stated that it is the dirtiest election that Indonesia has ever had in post-Suharto period,” Harsono said.
Both losing candidates are now also alleging mass fraud in the vote count. There is not yet credible evidence of anything remotely on the scale needed to tip the results. “I’m sure there’s stuff here and there,” said Seth Soderborg, an expert on Indonesian polling. “But tens of millions of fake votes would leave traces.”
Still, the electoral interference during the campaign is enough for many people to worry—especially when combined with Prabowo’s own past. He first came to prominence serving in Indonesia’s special forces during the bloody counterinsurgency campaign in East Timor. Prabowo was involved, as a soldier, in the killing of resistance leader Nicolau Lobato. He has been accused of responsibility for massacres in both East Timor and West Papua—something he has always strenuously denied.
His marriage to Suharto’s daughter brought him political prominence, with some seeing him as a potential heir. When pro-democracy protests brought down Suharto’s regime in 1998, Prabowo was implicated in the kidnapping of 23 democracy activists (13 of whom remain missing and presumed dead) and may have tried to seize power himself.
Briefly forced into exile by the new government, Prabowo soon returned to Indonesian politics. He sought to be nominated as a presidential candidate in 2004, ran as a vice presidential candidate in 2009, and then ran for the presidency itself in 2014 and 2019.
On both occasions, he was beaten by Jokowi. When he lost in 2019, he initially denied the results, alleging massive fraud, sparking a riot that left eight people dead. Jokowi stunned many when he defused the situation by bringing Prabowo into government as defense minister.
This set the scene for the final transformation of his career into Jokowi’s heir apparent and, for many younger voters, a cuddly old man. In the previous decade, Prabowo’s campaigns were marked by a fiery strongman nationalism, with him riding into stadiums on the backs of stallions to warn baying crowds about the forces of foreign subversion and communism. His alliance with extremist Islamist groups added to the menace, despite his obvious opportunism. (Prabowo’s mother is Christian, as is his brother.)
This time around, Prabowo ostentatiously and repeatedly declared his loyalty to and plans to continue the policies of Jokowi, a man his campaigns once smeared as a crypto-communist-Chinese-atheist-Christian. On the campaign trail, flashes of nationalism made themselves felt in warnings about foreigners bringing Indonesia down and stealing its wealth. But his most prominent campaign feature was the promotion of his image as gemoy, or cute. Social media was blanketed with videos of him dancing like a dad and cuddling cats and Pixarified cartoons of his face.
Young voters in particular flocked to him, liking his image and perhaps unaware of his past. In the crowd waiting for Prabowo to deliver his victory speech, Fauzan Dismas, an engineering student, declared that he liked Prabowo because he was “tough.” But when asked about past allegations of human rights abuses and links to Suharto, the student demurred that he didn’t know much about that. “I wasn’t born yet.”
So, what’s next?
Internationally, Indonesia’s stance will probably not greatly change. The United States and China are both courting it, but the country has long committed to the principle of neutrality and nonalignment in international affairs. Prabowo has emphasized his commitment to this stance, comparing Indonesia’s position to Switzerland or Finland during the Cold War.
Still, Prabowo’s bombastic nature and nationalistic streak could mean occasional surprises. Indonesia continues to contest China’s claims in the South China Sea, which overlap with what Indonesian pointedly calls the North Natuna Sea. Last August, Prabowo briefly seemed to take a harder line on this, issuing a joint statement with the U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. But two months before, at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, he proposed a Ukraine peace plan that the United States and its allies frostily viewed as pro-Russian.
Domestically, beyond worries about democratic decline, the key question may be how long the Prabowo-Jokowi alliance will last. Detailed policy discussion was lacking during the campaign, but Prabowo loudly promised to follow Jokowi’s lead on infrastructure, “downstreaming” Indonesia’s natural resources, and building a new capital in Borneo. Yet Prabowo is known for his mercurial temper and has harbored ambitions to lead for decades. Will he really be content being in his predecessor’s shadow?
Should Prabowo buck at this, Jokowi might well find himself with limited influence. His son may be vice president, but the role, much as in the United States, comes with very little formal power beyond what the president is inclined to cede.
Jokowi also has no political vehicle of his own. He is still formally a member of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), but that bridge has been thoroughly burnt by his tacit backing of Prabowo over the candidate nominated by the PDI-P, former Central Java Gov. Ganjar Pranowo. Meanwhile, the tiny Indonesian Solidarity Party—which his other son, Kaesang Pangarep, took over in September—failed to get enough votes to enter the national legislature.
Prabowo is also 72 and rumored to be in poor health. Should the conceivable happen, the world’s third-largest democracy may find itself in the hands of a young man whose previous experience includes some relatively successful business ventures and two years as mayor of the city his dad used to run. Some veteran Indonesian technocrats are unsure about which thought is most worrying: President Prabowo or President Gibran?
