Pressing forward for president

In the lead: Prabowo (left) arriving with running mate Gibran for a televised debate in Jakarta earlier this month. Jokowi supporters have been moving over to Prabowo’s side since Gibran, Jokowi’s eldest son, was named as the vice-presidential candidate in October. — AFP

“WHO will you vote for?” I asked the Grab driver, pointing at the billboards of Indonesian presidential candidates along the macet (congested) highway from Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta Inter-national Airport to the Indo-nesian capital.

“Prabowo. Kesian dia, dua kali gagal. Kalau tiada Jokowi, dia sudah presiden sembilan tahun lalu. (Probowo. Pity him, he failed twice. If there was no Jokowi, he would have been president nine years ago),” the driver said.

The 40something Javanese’s choice is Prabowo Subianto, president of the Geriendra party. The driver explained that in Indo-nesia’s 2014 and 2019 presidential elections, he would have voted for Prabowo if not for Joko “Jokowi” Widodo on the ballot.

The popular President Jokowi has served two terms and is constitutionally barred from running for a third time in the 2024 elections.

I’m in Jakarta for the third time in the last three months, and my favourite game is guessing who Indonesians – whether a friend or a stranger – would vote for in the elections. I had actually correctly guessed my driver’s answer.

It is campaign time in Indonesia. The 75-day campaign period for “pilpres” (pemilihan presiden or presidential elections) started on Nov 29, and an estimated 204 million are eligible to vote in the polls on Feb 14, 2024.

There are three candidates in the pilpres: Anies Baswedan, a former Jakarta governor; Prabowo, the current Defense Minister; and Ganjar Pranowo, a former Central Java governor.

I give myself a 66% success rate in correctly guessing who an Indonesian will vote for. I begin by asking the person, whether friend or stranger, a few questions.

If I get the sense that he or she is a conservative Muslim, I’ll guess he/she will vote for Anies. In 2017, as Jakarta governor, Anies shut down the infamous Alexis Hotel, widely rumoured to be a site for prostitution. (I visited for journalistic purposes, and there’s truth in the rumour.)

When chatting with a bakmi babi (pork noodle) seller in Glodok, Jakarta’s Chinatown, I observed that the Chinese man had a PDI-P (Indonesian Demo-cratic Party of Struggle) poster on the wall of his stall. The party is “pro-minoritas” (pro-minority communities such as Chinese or Dayak), so the noodleseller is obviously going to vote for PDI-P’s candidate, Ganjar.

I usually get it right in Bandung when I deduce the pick is Prabowo, as the city in West Java is his stronghold. A survey conducted there last month revealed that Prabowo-Gibran electability in West Java is 51%. Gibran Rakabuming Raka, Jokowi’s 36-year-old son, is Prabowo’s running mate.

With three candidates, technically, I have a 33% chance of guessing right. But no. Because there are fourth and fifth choices. Golput refers to golongan putih, or “white group”, comprising those who abstain from voting as none of the candidates inspires them. And there are also the undecided, those still thinking about who they want to vote for.

Based on the latest survey by Kompas, a credible polling firm, Prabowo is leading among 39.3% of survey participants, Anies is at 16.7%, and Ganjar is at 15.3%; the undecided make up 28.7%.

Previously, Prabowo and Ganjar were neck and neck in polling. But after Gibran was named as Prabowo’s running mate on Oct 22, many Jokowi supporters switched from supporting Ganjar of PDI-P (the party through which Jokowi contested in 2014 and 2019) to the Geri-endra party’s Prabowo, the man who lost to the current president twice.

That’s the Jokowi effect. The president has a high popularity rating (about 80%) and can sway his supporters to go over to the team consisting of his arch rival and his son.

As a result, Ganjar’s popularity has dipped. Team Ganjar has also stopped attacking the president as they found it was counterproductive. It is now changing its tune on its tough rhetoric against Jokowi, the politician whom PDI-P chairwoman and former president Megawati Soekarnoputri helped to the finish line twice.

Jokowi, the Javanese master politician, is playing a game called “How to tell voters that you support your son without saying that you support him”. The president gives the impression that he is neutral. For example, he hosted a state lunch with all three candidates at the Presidential Palace on Oct 30.

But for those in the know, the president is still the supportive father of Gibran, who is running for vice-president.

When I wrote about this new Indonesian political dynasty in October, a Malaysian political analyst messaged me to say that I should have included Prabowo’s human rights record in the article. I replied that the article was about Gibran and not Prabowo.

But, as requested, here’s a little bit about Prabowo’s past:

Prabowo, who was then commander of the army’s strategic reserves, has been accused of human rights abuses in Timor Leste and of being involved in the disappearance of 13 student activists in 1998. At that time, Prabowo’s father-in-law, Suharto, was the Indonesian president and had ruled the country for three decades, stepping down in 1998 following widespread unrest.

Prabowo denies all the claims.

It is fascinating to examine the rebranding of Prabowo. In the 2014 and 2019 polls, the ex-general had a tough and temperamental image. Now he is seen as a gemoy (cute) politician who does the joget badly. It is an image that the younger generation, which makes up half of total voters, can relate to.

Prabowo might be leading the presidential race. But if he doesn’t get more than 50% of the votes, there will be a second round of voting between the top two candidates in July next year.

There are still 28.7% undecided voters. They might be the ones picking the new Indonesian president.

And gemoy and awkward joget moves just may be the decider.