February 19, 2024
KUALA LUMPUR – WHO is Prabowo Subianto, the man who claimed victory in Indonesia’s presidential elections on Wednesday after unofficial counts had him winning almost 60% of the vote?
Is he a strongman, three-star general or a conservative man of the people?
Accusations of human rights violations cloud his military past, which he forged during his father-in-law’s 32-year reign – Prabowo married Titiek Suharto, former president Suharto’s second daughter.
The former Army Special Forces commander was allegedly involved in a massacre during a counterinsurgency operation in East Timor in the 1980s and is linked to the abduction of a couple of dozen student activists in 1998, an incident for which he was fired from the military.
In the 2014 and 2019 presidential elections, the president of the Gerindra party built an image as a hardline, hot-headed and tegas (firm) leader. There are various clips of a fiery Prabowo during the two elections when he stood against and lost to Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, when he famously lost his temper and banged the podium to demand “change”.
After the 2019 elections, Prabowo refused to concede defeat, and his accusations of election fraud supposedly perpetrated by his opponents sparked riots in Jakarta.
Heeding the classic advice to keep your friends close and your enemies closer, Jokowi invited his bitter rival into his government. It was a master stroke. And with his military past, it seemed to make sense to make Prabowo the Defence Minister in 2019.
So, is Prabowo a gemoy (cuddly and adorable) politician now?
Ahead of the 2024 presidential elections, Prabowo changed his tegas image to a bapak-bapak (friendly uncle) and gemoy one – and also established himself as a cat-lover. The Defence Minister’s gemoy-ness is personified in TikTok videos in which he performs his signature move: an awkward joget.
“Prabowo’s dancing is bad for a dance competition. But the typical Millennial and Gen Z-er is concerned about you being as you are. Not pretending,” a communications expert who is part of the Prabowo team told me.
“In 2019, pretending worked. Nowadays, for Millennials and Gen Z-ers, it doesn’t work. You know the character of the young is not being judgemental – not being someone else. That is why Prabowo’s approach is working with them.”
Young voters play a significant role in deciding who will be president as half of the country’s 202 million eligible voters are aged between 17 and 39.
I asked the communications expert – who did not want to be identified as he is part of what is very likely to be the winning team – at what point Prabowo made these changes to his image. And was it his decision to do so or did his political advisers tell him to behave as a gemoy politician.
“I wouldn’t say it is rebranding but rather, enlightenment as he learned from his experience being a minister. Whenever he attended the [Cabinet] meetings, he saw how Jokowi leads. Jokowi never gets angry in front of other people. Jokowi is very straightforward,” the expert said.
“So the more and more he met President Pak Jokowi, the more he felt that his communication with, or approach to, people had to be different.”
Before, according to the expert, Prabowo was too militaristic.
“Of course, he is a three-star general surrounded by hardliners – Islamic fundamentalists. Pak Jokowi, however, is very Javanese. He meets people, the grassroots, and Prabowo learnt a lot from how the President communicates with people,” he said.
But being gemoy can only take you so far. It is doubtful Prabowo could have come to be in a position to claim victory without the “Jokowi effect” – unusually for a second-term President, Jokowi has an approval rating exceeding 70%.
In the last few months before the 75-day campaign period began in November, Prabowo was neck and neck with former Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowo. Ganjar is the presidential bet of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), led by former president Megawati Soekarnoputri. Jokowi ran successfully as Solo mayor, Jakarta governor and Indonesia President on the PDI-P ticket.
But the fallout from a political and personality clash caused Jokowi to part ways with Megawati. And in this year’s elections, Jokowi, while remaining a member of PDI-P, has tacitly supported Prabowo against PDI-P’s candidate, Ganjar. And only after Jokowi’s son became his running mate in November did the Defence Minister’s popularity surge while Ganjar’s plummeted.
Critics accuse Jokowi of using his brother-in-law, Chief Justice Anwar Usman, in a Constitu-tional Court case to pave the way for his 36-year-old son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, to run for vice-president. Jokowi also did nothing to stop the General Elections Commission (KPU) from letting his son’s candidacy stand.
The Constitutional Court ruling amended the minimum age of 40 years, allowing Gibran to run. The top court, including Anwar, and the KPU were later found guilty of ethical breaches.
Unofficial quick counts during the week showed that PDI-P voters mostly went with Prabowo and not Ganjar, who even lost in his party’s traditional strongholds of Central Java and Bali.
Critics also claimed Jokowi deployed populist government programmes to support the Prabowo-Gibran ticket. They listed El Nino cash aid for low-income households and civil servants’ first pay rise in five years as two such programmes. Team Prabowo-Gibran were also supported by Jokowi’s aides and volunteer networks as well as the resources and powers afforded the state.
“Only Jokowi can defeat Prabowo. And only Jokowi can make Prabowo president,” a PDI-P insider told me.
A combination of popularity (the gemoy effect) and political manoeuvring (the Jokowi effect) seems to be propelling Prabowo towards the top spot of the world’s biggest Muslim country.
The big question is, when Prabowo becomes president will he be Jokowi’s puppet or his own man?