In Indonesian Election, President Joko Widodo Leads in Voting Returns
JAKARTA, Indonesia — President Joko Widodo of Indonesia led by a comfortable margin in unofficial returns in his re-election bid on Wednesday, as he appeared to fend off a challenge by a four-time presidential candidate supported by hard-line Islamists.
His opponent, Prabowo Subianto, tried to win popular support by attacking “evil elites” who he said had undermined the country. Mr. Prabowo was once married to a daughter of Suharto, the dictator who ruled Indonesia for three decades up to 1998, and he was dismissed from the army decades ago for ordering his troops to kidnap activists.
Unofficial vote counts had Mr. Joko leading by roughly 10 percentage points. Official ballot counts in the far-flung island nation take weeks, but the winner usually becomes apparent hours after the voting through so-called quick counts, in which independent polling companies tally ballots from a sampling of polling places nationwide.
If Mr. Joko wins as expected, he will continue to face daunting challenges, including the threat of Islamic terrorism, frequent natural disasters, and raising the standard of living for the sprawling country’s huge impoverished population.
The president also sought to begin national healing from the campaign, which was heated at times.
“Let us go back to unite as brothers and sisters as the same country and nation after this presidential and legislative election,” he said.
During his campaign, Mr. Joko, 57, emphasized infrastructure development while moving to shore up support among traditional Muslims. He was the governor of Jakarta, the capital, before becoming president.
Some critics feared that a victory by Mr. Prabowo could turn the clock back toward authoritarian rule.
As a lieutenant general during the Suharto era, Mr. Prabowo, 67, commanded the feared Special Forces and was later dismissed from the army for insubordination and the kidnapping of at least nine activists who opposed his father-in-law’s rule.
In this election, Mr. Prabowo sought support from Islamists eager to expand the role of Islam in daily life, like by requiring women and girls to wear hijabs in public.
To counter Mr. Prabowo’s appeal to such Muslims, Mr. Joko named a conservative cleric, Ma’ruf Amin, as his running mate and made a pilgrimage to Mecca this week to remind voters of his piety.
At a polling station in central Jakarta, Trianasari Arief, 44, said she was excited to vote for Mr. Joko and wanted to do her part to keep Mr. Prabowo from winning. She said the ex-general, known for his quick temper and unpredictable behavior, reminded her of President Trump and his upset victory in 2016.
“I don’t want what happened in the United States to happen in Indonesia — where people don’t go to vote and they get the orange-skin guy into office,” Ms. Trianasari said.
But Mr. Prabowo’s anti-elitist message did win favor among some voters. Sri Lestari, 42, a nanny in the affluent Menteng neighborhood, said Mr. Joko had not done enough to bring fairness to the judicial system, resolve human rights cases or unify the people.
“I want a leader who is firm and has high integrity, who is independent, not steered by other people and can make a decision on his own,” she said.
Even with a victory by Mr. Joko, commonly known as Jokowi, the long-term trend toward increasingly conservative Islam in Indonesia is expected to continue.
“Before we knew the election results, regardless of who was going to win, we knew the influence of conservative Islam was going to grow,” said Douglas Ramage, the Jakarta-based managing director of BowerGroupAsia, a business consulting firm.
At a time when many Southeast Asian countries have become autocratic, Indonesia remains one of the most democratic.
About 190 million people were eligible to vote in an election that employed six million temporary poll workers. To prevent undue influence, members of the military and the police — more than 800,000 people — were barred from voting.
- Source : Richard C. Paddock & Muktita Suhartono
