| Home > South-East Asia >> Indonesia | |
Optimism the likely winner over anxiety in robust presidential election
Sydney Morning Herald - July 10, 2014
Only such a clear result, the anxious believed, would deliver certainty. Without it, the results might be disputed, supporters of either side might hit the streets, and Indonesia thrown into chaos.
Unfortunately, certainty we do not have. "Quick counts" taken from a sample of ballot paper cast on the day differ at the margins, but they appear to show the Jakarta governor, Joko Widodo, the winner over former army strongman Prabowo Subianto with a margin of about 4 percentage points.
Nevertheless, both men are claiming victory. With the official count of up to 190 million votes to take until July 22, quick counts are all we've got to go on for almost a fortnight, and reliance on their accuracy is total.
All the reputable agencies – and there are about half a dozen of them – say that Joko, universally known as Jokowi, won.
The rest, three of them, which say Prabowo took the prize, are paid for by TV stations owned by members of his political coalition, and have now been put under investigation by their own professional body.
But the dodgy provenance of these agencies has not reduced the volume of their barracking, particularly on news channel TVOne – owned by tycoon Aburizal Bakrie – which insists Prabowo has been elected. That view will still therefore have some currency, despite its tenuous link to reality.
What you think happens next depends on whether you are an optimist for Indonesian democracy or a pessimist.
A pessimist would say that Prabowo, with his virtually unlimited resources, his deep links into Indonesia's security forces and into the shady netherworld of civilian militia groups (prominent at his rallies in their paramilitary uniforms), will try to buy or bully the Election Commission to make the reality fit his fantasy.
In this view, there is a possibility of violent protests and secret coercion of the kind that once blighted the New Order regime of Prabowo's former father-in-law, Suharto.
An optimist would say that Indonesia is no longer like this. There are too many watchful eyes, too many democrats, a robust free press, people prepared to speak out if they see something wrong.
And in this election season so far, it's the optimists who have won out every time.
This was a hard-fought campaign between two (eventually) evenly matched and entirely contrasting men. It's a very familiar format to Australians, Americans, British people, but it's never before happened in Indonesia.
There were rallies, negative campaigns, wall-to-wall TV coverage, even a smear attack (based, it seems, on the birther conspiracy against Barack Obama) against Jokowi. Monumental sums of money were expended by Prabowo, in particular. Ultimately, though, all that money and all those smears did not carry the day and there was no violence along the way.
This seems like a turning point for Indonesia in many ways. Joko Widodo, the likely president, is the first post-Suharto politician to scale those heights. This is a significant achievement considering his opponent. He did it with civility, calmness and a grassroots appeal.
The election itself was robust, but peaceful, and, so far as we can tell so far, genuinely democratic.
Prabowo might be tempted to try to fight his way out of this, but the most likely outcome is that sooner (on the basis of quick counts) or later (in late August, when all chances of appeal are exhausted) he'll need to accept he has lost.
It already seems he's started to talk himself down from his initial claim of victory. He now says he'll wait for the umpire's decision.
The incumbent, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has been mocked in Indonesia for his aversion to action, came into his own on election night by calling the protagonists to calm down and to stop their public protestations.
He called both men to his private residence at Cikeas and spoke to them separately at about midnight on election night, telling Jokowi to restrain the celebrations and Prabowo to keep his supporters calm.
He's played his role as president. Now we'll have a chance to see how the rest of Indonesia's democrats play theirs.
See also:
 |