Explainer | Indonesia election: who will win between Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto?

Jokowi again faces a challenge from former general Prabowo, who has attacked the incumbent’s track record on the economy and promised to end growing inequality

Religious identity politics and fake news have both shaped the campaign, which culminates next Wednesday

Reading Time:4 minutes

Joko Widodo and his running mate Ma’ruf Amin. Photo: Reuters

Published: 9:00am, 15 Apr 2019Updated: 2:22pm, 12 Dec 2019

On Wednesday, Indonesians will vote for their next president and vice-president, and for members of local, regional and national parliaments. An estimated 192 million people, or 74 per cent of the population, are eligible to vote, making it one of the world’s biggest and most complex elections.

In the presidential race, President Joko Widodo will be seeking a second term – his challenger is Prabowo Subianto. The two men also faced off in the 2014 election, when Jokowi – as Widodo is known – won the popular vote by a margin of about 6 per cent, getting 71 million more votes than Prabowo.

Meet the candidates

From 2005-12, Jokowi, a former furniture entrepreneur, served as mayor of Solo, a town in central Java. He then became the governor of Jakarta from 2012 to 2014, a post that propelled him to prominence. He launched a range of infrastructure projects and revived the mass rail transit construction project after securing funding from Japan.

Jokowi has cultivated an image as an everyman and a pragmatic, liberal reformist unburdened by ties to the political and military establishment of the Suharto era. This served him well in 2014 but he has since been forced to adjust to some of the brutal realities of Indonesian politics.

He appointed former Suharto-era military leaders to his cabinet, including Wiranto as coordinating security minister. Wiranto, a former general, was indicted for war crimes in East Timor in 1999.

Jokowi’s pivot to reinforce his position has also included the use of the electronic information and transactions law to stifle dissent, a crackdown on organisations deemed hostile to state ideology, and increased military involvement in civilian administration.

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Explainer | Indonesia election: who will win between Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto?

Jokowi again faces a challenge from former general Prabowo, who has attacked the incumbent’s track record on the economy and promised to end growing inequality Religious identity politics and fake news have both shaped the campaign, which culminates next Wednesday

Meet the candidates

Jokowi again faces a challenge from former general Prabowo, who has attacked the incumbent’s track record on the economy and promised to end growing inequality

Religious identity politics and fake news have both shaped the campaign, which culminates next Wednesday