Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s son breached rules during the campaign for next month’s presidential election, the country’s election watchdog ruled yesterday.
Gibran Rakabuming Raka, 36, is seeking to become vice president on the ticket led by Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto, who currently holds a commanding lead in public opinion polls.
The General Election Supervisory Agency, known by its Indonesian acronym Bawaslu, announced yesterday that Gibran had violated a Jakarta regulation when he handed out free milk to children at a public “car-free day” in the Indonesian capital last month, Reuters reported.
According to the agency’s report, a 2016 Jakarta gubernatorial order bars “events for the interests of political parties” during car-free days, when vehicles are banned from major thoroughfares in an attempt to promote more active lifestyles and improve the city’s dismal air quality.
Bawaslu, which made the ruling after questioning the candidate for several hours on Wednesday, said that it did not have the power to penalize Gibran for breaking the local regulation. Gibran told reporters after he was questioned that his appearance at the event in Jakarta in early December was not related to the presidential campaign. “We explained to them that there was no political party activity at all in the car-free day event in Jakarta on December 3,” Gibran said, as reported by BenarNews.
Habiburokhman, deputy chair of the Prabowo-Gibran campaign, said that it was not pleased with Bawaslu’s decision to summon Gibran, and that the campaign would file a complaint against the watchdog for its “unprofessional” conduct.
As a breach of the spirit of democracy, Gibran’s alleged minor violation of Jakarta’s regulations pales in significance next to the legal chicanery that allowed him to run in the February 14 election in the first place. The 36-year-old was ineligible prior to a Constitutional Court ruling in mid-October that created an exception to the minimum age requirement of 40, allowing candidates who have served in elected office at the regional level to run as presidential and vice-presidential candidates.
The ruling appears to have been tailor-made for Gibran, who has served as mayor of Surakarta, a post once occupied by his father, since 2021. This was only underscored by the fact that his uncle then served as the chief justice of the Constitutional Court and refused to recuse himself from the case. While he was later removed from his post over the breach, the ruling stands.
Critics of the Constitutional Court’s action claim that it represents an open manipulation of the Indonesian legal system by or on behalf of Jokowi, in the interest of ensuring that his influence continues beyond the end of his term in October. For Prabowo, the appointment of Gibran has been a calculated gamble that appointing Gibran will allow him to court the support of young voters while tapping into Jokowi’s deep reservoir of popularity, and finally clinch the presidency after failed attempts in 2014 and 2019.
Despite concerns about the ruling in some quarters, recent public opinion surveys show the Prabowo-Gibran ticket commanding a considerable lead over former Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan and Ganjar Pranowo, the ex-governor of Central Java. A poll conducted on December 23-24 by Indikator Politik Indonesia showed that Prabowo would secure 46.7 percent of the vote on February 14, well ahead of Ganjar (24.5 percent) and Anies (21 percent).
This large gap now has the Prabowo campaign dreaming of clinching the presidency in a single round of voting. To win in one round, a candidate must win a majority of the national vote (50 percent+1) and prevail in more than half of the country’s 38 provinces.
“Prabowo’s improving poll numbers have lent credence to such a possibility,” Alexander Raymond Arifianto wrote in a recent commentary for Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. “Not only is the Prabowo campaign team extremely well resourced, but Prabowo is also seen to have the endorsement of incumbent president Jokowi, whose son Gibran is Prabowo’s running mate.”
As things stand, the Gibran gambit appears poised to pay off, at least for Prabowo.