One-Round Election

PRESIDENT Joko Widodo is increasingly openly supporting Prabowo Subianto. As well as acting behind the screens, he has taken to the stage to realize his ambition of victory for the presidential candidate who is paired with his son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka.

Jokowi has been acting like the ‘spokesperson’ for Prabowo-Gibran after the second presidential candidate debate on January 7. He asked the General Election Commission to change the format of the debate to be more focused on visions and missions, rather than personal attacks. Jokowi was defending Prabowo, who was unable to answer the questions from his rivals, Anies Baswedan and Ganjar Pranowo, in the debate on the themes of defense, security, international relations and geopolitics—topics that Prabowo as Defense Minister should have had a good understanding of.

Prabowo was roundly defeated. He was unable to respond to a question about the optimal use of the Rp143-trillion 2023 Ministry of Defense budget, part of which was used to procure secondhand fighter planes. And he could not answer Ganjar’s question about achieving the minimal target for Indonesian military strength.

Jokowi seems to have forgotten that he embraced ‘personal issues’ in his debates with Prabowo preceding the 2019 election. Jokowi attacked Prabowo by describing himself as not being a person who was authoritarian, corrupt or a violator of human rights. Prabowo was, of course, discharged from the military for leading a team that kidnapped pro-democracy activists in 1998.

Jokowi seems to have overstepped the mark because he is now openly not neutral in the presidential election, a violation of the Constitution. If Prabowo and Jokowi’s son fail to become president and vice-president, Jokowi will lose his political bargaining power after the 2024 election. There will be no hope of political protection from the other two candidates, Anies Baswedan or Ganjar Pranowo.

If either of them win, Anies or Ganjar might embrace the parties that supported Prabowo, but they will not include Jokowi. The only remaining supporter for Jokowi will be the Indonesian Solidarity Party, now led by Gibran’s younger brother, Kaesang Pangarep, but there is no guarantee that the party will win seats in the House of Representatives. As he will potentially have to take responsibility for a number of policies that may have been against the law over the last 10 years, Jokowi will be in a very difficult position.

The brazen ambition to bring about a victory for Prabowo and Gibran has now taken the form of a dream that the pair will win in one round of voting. But one month before polling day, less than half the electorate say they will vote for Prabowo-Gibran.

According to a December 2023 opinion poll by Indikator Politik Indonesia, the vote share of the three candidates has not changed significantly. Prabowo-Gibran is stuck at 46 percent, Ganjar Pranowo at 25 percent and Anies Baswedan at 21 percent. If these figures can be trusted, it will be difficult for Prabowo to win in only one round of voting.

Prabowo’s vote share is at the ‘traditional’ level he obtained in the last two elections. In 2019, Prabowo garnered 44.5 percent of the vote, a decline from the 2014 vote when he won 46.8 percent. Therefore, Prabowo has not gained any additional vote share despite running with Gibran, with all of the advantages he brings with him as a son of the president.

According to Law No. 7/2017 on General Election, to win in one round, a candidate must receive more than 50 percent of the national vote plus at least a 20 percent vote share in more than half the provinces in Indonesia. Therefore, Jokowi’s efforts to bring about victory for Prabowo, at least according to the latest poll, have not yet succeeded.

If he continues to not be neutral in order to ensure victory for Prabowo and his son, Jokowi will lose out in two ways. Firstly, in the second round of votes in June, Prabowo’s share of the vote could collapse as a result of public anger at the head of state’s lack of neutrality. Secondly, Jokowi will be remembered as the worst president since the start of the Reformasi era. Because of these two factors, Jokowi could be consigned to the ash heap of history.