With less than a month to go until the new presidential election, Indonesia's general election is in its final sprint.
Of the three groups of candidates, Prabowo and Gibran are the most popular with 50.9 percent support, while Ganjar and Anies are second and third respectively, hovering around 20 percent.
Prabowo and Gibran
Prabowo is no stranger to everyone, the current Indonesian defense minister, who has made outstanding political achievements since taking office, especially in promoting the modernization of Indonesia's national defense, and has made great contributions. He is also well-known internationally and has spoken out on many hot issues around the world.
In an effort to play to his advantage in international affairs, Prabowo's campaign also proposed using English instead of Bahasa Indonesia in the debates to show the candidate's understanding of current international geopolitical issues and his ability to communicate with foreign leaders, but this was not accepted.
Prabowo positions himself as "Jokowi's successor", he claims to be a big fan of Jokowi's students, and he also renamed the party he leads "Indonesia Forward Alliance" to echo Jokowi's "Indonesia Forward Cabinet", and those who don't know think he is Jokowi's son.
In fact, Prabowo had lost to Jokowi twice in the previous two general elections, and it was not until he was invited to the cabinet by Jokowi after the last general election that the two were reconciled. In this election, Prabowo not only showed loyalty to Jokowi, but also chose Jokowi's eldest son Gibran as his vice presidential running mate.
Prabowo and Jokowi
In this way, it attracted both Jokowi's supporters and Jokowi's trust. Earlier, the top management of Jokowi's largest supporter group, "Projo", announced that he would visit Prabowo and said that he would support him in the presidential election, a move that was also said to have been agreed to by Jokowi.
It is worth mentioning that according to the Indonesian constitution, the presidential and vice presidential candidates must be at least 40 years old, and the 36-year-old Gibran would not have been eligible to run. But on the eve of the official registration of candidates, the Indonesian Constitutional Court ruled that current or former local leaders under the age of 40 could also run, and Gibran was approved as a vice presidential candidate as mayor of Solo.
One reason for Gibran's popularity among young voters is that he won 86.53% of the vote in the 2020 mayoral election. On the other hand, his uncle Usman also helped a lot. Usman, the chief justice of Indonesia's Constitutional Court, played a key role in ruling Gibran's eligibility for the petition, and the two sides have a degree of interest.
Jokowi's eldest son, Gibran
The opposition took the opportunity to accuse Jokowi of engaging in "family politics", but the poll results showed that voters did not worry that the Jokowi family would be in power, which shows the popularity of the Jokowi father and son.
Jokowi also expressed his support for the eldest son's candidacy, saying that being a parent is about supporting what their children want to do, and he also supports all candidates in the national interest.
The 72-year-old Prabowo is an advanced age, and Djibouti's addition makes up for his age, with a mix of old and young that doesn't feel overly frivolous and exudes a different kind of energy.
According to the data, more than half of Indonesia's 204.8 million voters are under the age of 40, reaching 106 million.
To this end, the three groups of candidates are doing everything they can to attract young voters. Don't look at Prabowo's age, but he uses chubby cartoon characters in his campaign posters, which looks very cute.
The old and the young are matched, and the work is not tiring
In addition, Prabowo also posted a variety of dancing videos on social platforms, suggesting that he dance a "subject three" to ensure that Indonesian young people are not unwanted.
In contrast, Giblan, who is in his prime, obviously understands young people better, he held a sword at an event, played role-play, and said that he would always support the creativity of young people, and easily attracted a wave of e-sports fans.
No. 1 candidate Anies used TikTok's influence among young people to launch a live broadcast called "Accompany Me on the Road", which attracted hundreds of thousands of followers. Tasting the sweetness, Anies opened a live stream shortly after, with a record number of viewers, making him one of the hottest Indonesian politicians on TikTok.
No. 3 candidate Ganjar once said that he disdains to use these bells and whistles to attract young people, but after all, he still can't escape the "law of true fragrance", imitating the three-finger salute in "The Hunger Games" in public events, which once became the talk of melon-eating netizens after dinner.
Governor of Central Java Ganjar
For Ganjar, this is quite "out of the ordinary", preferring to run and cycle with the citizens on the streets to show a people-friendly image. Ganjar's running mate also spoke for him, saying that he hoped that young voters would not give up voting for him because of the candidate's serious, old-fashioned style, and almost wrote "don't dislike my partner" on his face.
The actions of several candidates have clearly attracted the attention of young voters, and some young people who don't usually pay much attention to politics can't help but click in to take a look, and occasionally ask friends who they are supporting.
However, it should be noted that politicians' words and deeds before coming to power do not have much credibility, and their overtures to young people are more about winning votes, and the key is whether their political platform can really benefit young people.
Needless to say, Prabowo has repeatedly stressed the need to inherit Jokowi's political line. Ganjar, a colleague of Jokowi's party, has also said that he will continue to promote the policies of the incumbent president. Anies shouted the slogan of "change" and criticized some of Jokowi's policies, focusing on tackling inequality in economic development.
Former Governor of the Jakarta Special Administrative Region Anies
The three candidates' diplomatic philosophies are quite similar, generally continuing Indonesia's policy of multilateralism and favoring a neutral non-aligned stance in the great power game.
The final election will be held on February 14, and although Prabowo is now firmly in first place, it will not be easy to get a majority of the votes in the first round of voting, otherwise he will have to go to the second round with the second-placed candidate.
The second round of voting will be held on June 26, and it is widely believed that if the second round goes to the second round, the loser of Ganjar and Anies will form an alliance with the winning side against Prabowo's camp, which is more than four months long enough for them to form an alliance.
In short, when the future is undecided, anyone can become a dark horse. The rare three-legged stand is destined to be suspenseful and unpredictable in this Indonesian general election. Let's wait and see where Indonesia will go in the post-Jokowi era.