JAKARTA: Indonesia’s Prabowo Subianto has been elected president of the world’s third-biggest democracy, the elections commission said Wednesday, beating two rivals who have vowed to file legal complaints about the vote.
The fiery defense minister and his vice presidential running mate Gibran Rakabuming Raka — eldest son of outgoing leader Joko Widodo — already declared victory last month after unofficial counts showed them winning a majority.
They were officially confirmed as winners Wednesday after receiving more than 96 million votes, commission chairman Hasyim Asy’ari said, roughly 58.6 percent of the total and enough to secure a first-round majority.
“This decision is effective immediately as of March 20,” Asy’ari said.
Anies Baswedan secured 24.9 percent of the vote, while Ganjar Pranowo received more than 16 percent.
More than 164 million Indonesians voted, representing around an 80 percent turnout of eligible voters.
Prabowo, 72, was widely predicted to win the presidency on his third attempt. He takes over in October after a transition period.
Speaking outside his house in the capital Jakarta to thunderous applause from supporters, Prabowo thanked Indonesians and his party for helping him rise to the country’s highest office.
“We are grateful to the God Almighty for the official announcement from the KPU on the results of the election,” he said, referring to the elections commission.
“We would like to convey our gratitudes and the highest appreciation for all the people of Indonesia who have exercised their rights to vote.”
His popularity soared because of what experts said was his nationalist verve in populist speeches, strongman credentials as defense minister and backing from Widodo, more popularly known as Jokowi.
Prabowo also offered his thanks to Jokowi, his former rival against whom he lost two election battles in 2014 and 2019.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken quickly offered “sincere congratulations” to Prabowo, saying Washington looked “forward to partnering closely” with the ex-general, who was once placed on a US visa blacklist.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also expressed his congratulations, saying in a statement that he looked forward “to deepening our strategic partnership even further” on issues like climate change.
Prabowo’s rivals, former Jakarta governor Anies and former Central Java governor Ganjar, have vowed to submit a complaint to the Constitutional Court about allegations of election irregularities and fraud.
Anies confirmed after results were announced that he would file a complaint to the court.
“A leader that was born out of a process tainted by cheating and violations will result in a regime that will produce policies that are full of unfairness, and we don’t want this to happen,” he said in a statement.
But Prabowo’s legal team is confident the result will not be successfully challenged because of his wide margin of victory, local media reported Tuesday.
Last month Indonesia held one of the world’s biggest single-day elections featuring hundreds of thousands of candidates vying for the presidency, parliamentary seats and local legislator positions.
After failing as a vice presidential candidate in 2009 and presidential candidate in 2014 and 2019, Prabowo rode to victory this time with Jokowi’s support.
The campaign was punctuated by accusations of ethical violations and interference by Jokowi, who critics said manoeuvered to install a political dynasty through his son before leaving office.
“Jokowi is the X factor that heavily influenced Prabowo’s victory,” said Firman Noor, politics professor at the National Research and Innovation Agency.
He has also tried to please Prabowo, experts say, by making him an honorary four-star general as the outgoing leader bids to keep his influence under the new administration.
Indonesia’s next president has also weathered allegations from rights groups and his former bosses that he played a role in the disappearance of student activists in the late 1990s at the end of dictator Suharto’s rule.
Between 1997 and 1998, when some kidnappings took place, Subianto led the elite army force known as Kopassus, used by Jakarta for special operations aimed at tamping down internal unrest. More than a dozen activists were never found.
He was discharged from the military over the kidnappings but has denied direct responsibility and the accusations appeared to have little impact on his electoral hopes this time.
Prabowo will inherit Southeast Asia’s largest economy, which is enjoying around five percent growth annually.
There is voter optimism about the economy with Prabowo’s pledge to carry on Jokowi’s resource nationalism that seeks to turn Indonesia into a global nickel powerhouse.
Others are less sure about the security of the country’s young democracy.
“I see the future of democracy becoming even bleaker during Prabowo’s time,” said Hurriyah, director of the University of Indonesia’s Center for Political Studies.
Indonesia’s Prabowo Subianto wins presidency with first-round majority
https://arab.news/nrung
Indonesia’s Prabowo Subianto wins presidency with first-round majority
- Fiery defense minister and his vice presidential running mate Gibran Rakabuming Raka — eldest son of outgoing leader Joko Widodo — already declared victory last month
- Prabowo also offered his thanks to Jokowi, his former rival against whom he lost two election battles in 2014 and 2019
Isolated Kremlin critics lament lost future at Nemtsov memorial
- Hundreds used to flock to the makeshift memorial on the anniversary of his death
- Since Russia ordered troops into Ukraine it has intensified a crackdown on dissent, with almost no opposition to the Kremlin visible on the street
MOSCOW: On a bridge next to the Kremlin on a drizzly Friday morning, a lone Russian police officer stood looking at the half-dozen bunches of flowers laying in memory of slain opposition figure Boris Nemtsov.
The symbolism was almost too much.
Four years into Moscow’s full-scale offensive on Ukraine, which has seen President Vladimir Putin eradicate all forms of dissent and usher in strict military censorship laws that have silenced his critics, few Russians dared, or wanted, to pay tribute.
Nemtsov, a longtime Putin opponent, was shot and killed on February 27 2015, meters from the Kremlin’s red walls. He was 55.
Hundreds used to flock to the makeshift memorial on the anniversary of his death, which came on Friday.
This year, there was barely a trickle. Those who turned up were visibly nervous.
“So few people, they’ve all forgotten,” lamented one elderly man, who refused to give his name.
“Everybody is afraid,” a woman standing nearby added.
Since Russia ordered troops into Ukraine it has intensified a crackdown on dissent, with almost no opposition to the Kremlin visible on the street.
AFP reporters on Friday morning saw only around a dozen mourners alongside Western ambassadors laying red carnations.
“Keep moving, don’t gather in a crowd, don’t block the way for other citizens,” a police officer said through a megaphone.
Three days after Russia launched its offensive on Ukraine in 2022, protesters had staged an impromptu rally against the war at the memorial on the anniversary of Nemtsov’s death.
Nemtsov’s supporters have always accused Chechen leader and key Putin ally Ramzan Kadyrov of ordering his killing.
Kadyrov has rejected the claims.
Five Chechens were convicted of a contract killing but investigators never said who it was ordered by.
- ‘Everything is persecuted’ -
For his followers, Nemtsov is a totemic figure in Russian political life — seen as a once-future leader who might have taken the country on a different path.
“I come here every year,” said 79-year-old scientist Sergei at the bridge on Friday.
“Russia should have had — though unfortunately it didn’t work out — a leader exactly like Nemtsov,” he told AFP, declining to give his surname.
“Right now everything here is suppressed, everything is persecuted, people are sitting in prisons.”
A physicist by education, Nemtsov rose to fame in the 1990s as a young, liberal provincial governor, and was widely tipped to take over from Boris Yeltsin.
He gave his hesitant backing to Putin when the ex-KGB spy was tapped to enter the Kremlin instead, but became an early — and fierce — opponent of what he cast as the Russian leader’s creeping authoritarianism.
He had largely lost popularity and was only a marginal figure in Russian politics when he was killed in 2015. Still, his murder shocked the country and the world.
“The hopes of the whole country were pinned on him — of all the people who wanted it to be free here,” said Olga Vinogradova, a 66-year-old volunteer who tends to the pop-up memorial to Nemtsov on the bridge.
“When this man was killed, naturally, all of us were, we were all just executed at that moment. Because our hopes were destroyed,” she said.
“With this memorial, we remind people that there was a different path for Russia. And that there was a real person who could have led us down this path.”
- ‘Forced out’ -
Nemtsov had strongly opposed Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and Moscow’s military backing for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
He was also a close and early ally of Alexei Navalny, who died in 2024 in an Arctic prison in what his supports say was a poisoning.
Open opposition to the Kremlin is unheard of inside Russia since the first days of the Ukraine offensive — when riot police cracked down hard on the thousands that took to the streets to protest.
All major critics of the Kremlin are in exile, prison or dead.
Those that remain have been silenced.
“Many have been forced out of the country, some have been killed,” said Gleb, a 23-year-old photographer.
A movement or person like Nemtsov was “impossible” to imagine right now, he said.
Still, he held on to a slither of hope.
“But everything can change at any moment.”
