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Indonesia election 2024: Prabowo takes flak for ‘slow brains’ remark, anti-disability rhetoric in final debate
- Prabowo, whose running mate is the president’s son, used Sunday’s final debate to again promote his multibillion-dollar plan to provide free meals
- He denied making a ‘very cruel’ comment about voters’ intelligence while campaigning, even as he implied that the disabled were not ‘normal people’
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Less than two weeks before voters head to the polls to choose Indonesia’s next leader, presidential front runner Prabowo Subianto found himself on the defensive following the final televised debate.
Three presidential hopefuls faced off on Sunday to discuss issues ranging from health to employment, culture, information technology, social welfare, and inclusion.
Prabowo, the current defence minister, used the opportunity to again promote his US$25.4 billion programme of free meals for schoolchildren and pregnant mothers.
The scheme’s stated aim is to prevent malnutrition and stunted growth in children, but fellow presidential hopeful Ganjar Pranowo attacked the idea for being an intervention that would come “too late”.
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“We should start checking the health of future brides and grooms,” said the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle’s (PDI-P) candidate and former Central Java governor.
“We need to pay attention to their ages too,” he added, saying he agreed with Indonesia’s current minimum age of 19 for marriage “as it means that they are mentally and physically developed”.
Ganjar further criticised as “very cruel” a statement Prabowo reportedly made last month while on the campaign trail in Kalimantan: namely that “people who want free internet have slow brains”. Free internet is one of the flagship programmes Ganjar plans to implement if elected as President Joko Widodo’s successor.
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