Indonesia election 2024: will young voters be key in picking the right man on Valentine’s Day?

The outcome of the three-way race could be determined by the turnout of voters for their respective candidates, analysts say

This year’s election has been dogged by controversies including perceived meddling by President Joko Widodo and the Constitutional Court

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People hold flags of Indonesia at the Selamat Datang Monument ahead of the 78th Independence Day in Jakarta on August 13, 2023. Photo: AFP

Published: 9:00am, 14 Feb 2024Updated: 12:15pm, 14 Feb 2024

Over 204 million eligible voters in cities across Indonesia are set to cast their votes in a pivotal election on Wednesday to determine who will lead the world’s third-largest democracy for the next five years.

The organisation of the world’s largest single-day election is no easy feat given the challenge of reaching out to voters living across Indonesia’s vast archipelago comprising over 17,000 islands.

The results of the three-way race will be highly dependent on voter turnout, according to observers, as the three candidates – Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto, former Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan and former Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowo – wound down their campaigning on Saturday after spending 75 days on the road.

To make this single-day vote possible, election commission officials, alongside armed guards, are travelling far and wide using boats, planes and even helicopters, to transport ballot boxes and papers across the country, including to remote outlying islands.

In Sumatra’s Aceh province, organisers were still debating using elephants to carry ballot boxes over tough terrains, according to an Agence France-Presse report. And in Lampung province, election officials have cows on standby to drag ballot boxes through mud tracks to and from polling stations.