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Indonesia’s President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has congratulated his Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto, after unofficial counts confirmed the gruff former normal clinching Wednesday’s presidential election by a decisive margin.
“Congratulations, congratulations. I met them in particular person, final evening,” Jokowi informed reporters yesterday, when requested if he had supplied his congratulations to Prabowo and his vice-presidential working mate, BenarNews reported.
Official outcomes is not going to be introduced till late March, however unofficial exit polls estimate that Prabowo received round 58 p.c of the vote, nicely over the 50 p.c wanted to keep away from a run-off election in June. This was nicely forward of his two rival candidates, Anies Baswedan, a former governor of Jakarta (25 p.c), and ex-Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowo (17 p.c).
Prabowo’s vice-president will likely be Jokowi’s eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, who, on the age of 36, will change into the youngest particular person in Indonesia’s historical past to carry that workplace, as soon as he and Prabowo are sworn into workplace in October. Certainly, Jokowi was extensively believed to have implicitly endorsed the pair, overlooking Ganjar, the candidate of his personal Indonesian Democratic Social gathering of Wrestle.
The election consequence has prompted the worldwide media to excavate the previous normal’s lengthy and controversial profession. Prabowo first rose to prominence as a army commander beneath Suharto’s New Order, which ruled Indonesia from 1967 to 1998. He served for a few years as commander of Kopassus, the military’s particular forces, and has been credibly implicated in a litany of human rights abuses, together with the kidnapping and torture of twenty-two activists who had opposed the New Order, 13 of whom stay lacking.
That Prabowo was capable of transcend this sordid previous, and by such a big margin, affords a placing parallel to the way in which wherein President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., one other determine related to a Chilly Battle-era dictatorship, was capable of prevail on the Philippine election of Might 2022. Certainly, the resemblances between the 2 instances are exceptional.
One is the son of a former Chilly Battle-era dictator, the opposite the ex-son-in-law. Each had been disgraced and exiled after the autumn of Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in 1986 and the autumn of Suharto in 1998, after which managed to return and reinsert themselves into the buildings of energy. Each loved the blessing of a predecessor – Rodrigo Duterte within the first case, Jokowi within the second – who was hailed as a populist outsider upon his personal election (albeit for very completely different causes.) Each then deployed an intense social media offensive to rebrand themselves, drown out the echoes of previous misdeeds, and obtain a decisive electoral victory.
Nevertheless, neither case is as stunning because it appears to be like. The 2 nations’ transitions from authoritarian rule to democracy had been in some ways incomplete revolutions, leaving a lot of the construction of oligarchic energy untouched. The shift from corrupt dictatorship to aggressive multiparty democracy additionally hid persevering with financial inequalities, upon which these populist campaigns would later feed. There’s additionally the straightforward truth of the passage of time, and the truth that a lot of those that voted for each Marcos and Prabowo haven’t any usable reminiscence of the repression and corruption of the anciens régimes.
However for these sufficiently old to recollect, and people who fell afoul of Suharto’s stultifying consensus, Prabowo’s victory has stirred up fearful reminiscences, because the Marcos reconquista did within the Philippines. As Indonesia’s president-elect was celebrating his victory together with his sky-blue-clad supporters yesterday, family of the 13 activists who disappeared in 1998 gathered within the rain outdoors the Presidential Palace in Jakarta.
As The Related Press reported, the individuals held up photos of the generals they held chargeable for the disappearances of their family members, together with a picture of Prabowo. “Mr. Prabowo, if you’re going to be the president, please resolve the enforced disappearance instances in order that we, the victims’ households, can have peace,” Paian Siahaan, 77, informed the information company.
Sadly, the ghosts of the Suharto period appear set to be drowned out by cheers of triumph and acclamation.
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