Court action looms as ex-military strongman Prabowo is confirmed as Indonesian president

Despite their bitter election history, Prabowo and Jokowi left any lingering enmity aside for what observers put down to political expediency. Following deadly 2019 post-election street protests in Jakarta, Jokowi brought the powerful ex-military strongman into his political tent as defence minister.

Loading

The pair has since been accused of underhanded co-operation to engineer mutually beneficial political ends: Prabowo, the presidency, and Jokowi, who is constitutionally barred from a third term in office, ongoing political influence through son Gibran and Prabowo’s pledge of policy continuity.

It is through this prism that Anies and Ganjar make their claims of dirty tricks. Though none of the pair’s allegations have been set out in great detail, they broadly relate to the supposed government manipulation of state institutions and the selective distribution of rice and cash to aid the Prabowo campaign.

“We plan to file to the [court] for sure, but the content is not something that we can disclose,” Anies said last week.

“When we are talking about free and fair elections, this also means that the state takes a neutral position toward any contestants and organises the election in a neutral way. That has been absent.”

The coalition of parties lining up behind Anies and Ganjar may also push for a parliamentary inquiry into the Jokowi’s government’s perceived meddling.

One of the most egregious examples of interference, according to critics, was a decision by the Constitutional Court (the same court to which Anies and Ganjar will take their complaints) that cleared the way for 36-year-old Gibran to run as vice president despite him being too young.

Chief Justice Anwar Usman – Jokowi’s brother-in-law – cast the nine-member panel’s deciding vote that ruled his nephew’s previous election win as incoming mayor of Solo was grounds enough to bypass the mandated vice president age floor of 40.

Kholil Pasaribu, a former KPU official, likened the 2024 election and its run-up to a “messy” version of the sham democracy under Suharto’s “New Order” regime.

Loading

“The New Order carried out frauds neatly so that they did not appear clearly to the public,” Kholil said. “But this time, it is clearly displayed. The president meddled in the election process, and he campaigned for a certain candidate.”

The Jokowi clan has denied any interference. Usman was later sanctioned by an ethics committee for his role in the Gibran decision. He will not sit on a panel hearing the complaints of Anies and Ganjar.

The world’s biggest single-day elections on February 14, which involved more than 800,000 polling stations spanning 6000 inhabited islands, were seen to run relatively smoothly given their logistical complexity.

But the KPU has since been accused of incompetence or worse amid claims of inflated vote numbers for particular candidates or parties.

One of those parties, PSI, is chaired by Jokowi’s youngest son Kaesang Pangerep. The storm surrounding this and other alleged irregularities prompted the KPU to take down its online vote count earlier this month, meaning the process could no longer be followed by civil society groups, further fuelling public scepticism.

Ganjar’s ticket under the banner of the PDIP, the party of Jokowi, was the early favourite until the wildly popular president appeared to shift his tacit endorsement towards the Prabowo camp.

Observers say Jokowi is looking to consolidate his presidential legacy and hold a form of power by nurturing a family dynasty – the antithesis of his own enduring appeal as the everyman who rose to power from outside Indonesia’s ruling elite.

Along with Kaesang, Jokowi’s son-in-law Bobby Nasution is the mayor of Medan. Prabowo in January endorsed Bobby as the next governor of Sumatra.

Most prominent of Jokowi’s next generation, however, is his son Gibran, a culinary entrepreneur who as a younger man showed little interest in politics until following in his father’s footsteps by running for Solo mayor and winning.

While appealing to younger voters otherwise ignorant of the ageing president-elect, Prabowo’s choice of Gibran as his running mate was also taken as a signal to the electorate of Jokowi’s backing.

Some Indonesia watchers are sure the nation’s relatively young democracy (the Suharto regime collapsed in 1998) is strong enough to keep Prabowo in check even if he ends up going rogue. Others, including powerful sections of the media, fear otherwise.

The Jakarta Post editorialised on Tuesday that Indonesia “could soon be back in the dark ages that marked the dictatorship under Suharto” and that “civil society had every reason to be concerned about the future of democracy and freedom”.

None of the citizen protests since February 14 have caused security forces much concern. This may change with the results now confirmed, but the current Muslim observance of Ramadan could also be a moderating factor.

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.