Judges preside over a hearing on the Presidential election result dispute at the Constitutional Court in Jakarta, Indonesia, on April 5, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Four Indonesian Cabinet members testified on April 5 that no rules were violated in the distribution of government aid during the recent election campaign, despite claims by the two losing Presidential candidates that it was used for the benefit of the election winner.

Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto won the election with 58.6% of the votes, or more than 96 million ballots, more than twice the amount received by each of the two runner-ups in the three-way race, according to the General Election Commission.

The losing candidates — former Jakarta Gov. Anies Baswedan and former Central Java Gov. Ganjar Pranowo — say the election was marred by irregularities and are asking the Constitutional Court to annul the results and order a revote in separate lawsuits.

They say Mr. Subianto’s victory was the result of widespread fraud and that outgoing President Joko Widodo and his administration bent laws and norms to support Mr. Subianto, with government social aid used as a tool to buy votes.

Indonesian Presidents are expected to remain neutral in elections to succeed them, but Mr. Subianto, a former rival of Mr. Widodo who twice lost elections to him before joining his government, ran as his successor. He even chose Mr. Widodo’s son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, as his Vice-Presidential running mate, even though Mr. Raka did not meet a Constitutional requirement that candidates be at least 40 years old.

Mr. Baswedan and Mr. Pranowo argue that Mr. Raka should have been disqualified and are asking the court to bar him from a revote. Before the election, Mr. Raka was granted a controversial exception to the minimum age requirement by the Constitutional Court, which was then led by Anwar Usman, Mr. Widodo’s brother-in-law. Mr. Usman was later forced to resign as Chief Justice for failing to recuse himself.

Hefty social aid from the government was disbursed in the middle of the campaign — far more than the amounts spent during the COVID-19 pandemic — and Mr. Widodo distributed funds in person in a number of provinces.

A panel of eight Constitutional Court judges summoned Coordinating Human Development and Culture Minister Muhadjir Effendy, Coordinating Economic Minister Airlangga Hartarto, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati and Social Affairs Minister Tri Rismaharini to obtain their dispositions, said Chief Justice Suhartoyo, who like many Indonesians uses a single name.

Mr. Effendy denied that the government aid provided from January to June 2024 favoured Mr. Subianto in the February Presidential election, and said it was dispersed to achieve a target of reducing extreme poverty.

Mr. Hartarto, who is also chair of the Golkar Party, part of the coalition supporting Mr. Subianto, said a decline in rice production caused by the El Niño phenomenon made the disbursement of social assistance important. He said the aid aimed to protect the poor and vulnerable from rising commodity prices due to El Niño and global supply chain disruptions.

“The government has to implement strategies to maintain the availability of food supplies and people’s purchasing power,” Mr. Hartarto said, adding that the programme was transparent and would continue to be implemented.

Widely respected Finance Minister Indrawati, a former managing director of the World Bank, said the aid was part of the government budget and had been approved by Parliament.

“Its realisation and payment pattern is no different compared to the previous six-year period,” Ms. Indrawati said. She said the enactment of the 2024 state budget was completed before the electoral commission announced the candidates in the Presidential race.

The case will be decided by eight justices instead of the full nine-member court because Mr. Usman, who is still on the court as an associate justice, is required to recuse himself.

Mr. Subianto himself went to the court twice to challenge the results of the elections he lost to Mr. Widodo, but the court rejected his claims as groundless both times. His refusal to accept the results of the 2019 Presidential election led to violence that left seven dead in Jakarta.

The hearing began on March 28 and the verdict, expected on April 22, cannot be appealed.

Presidential candidate Anies Baswedan. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Failed Indonesian presidential candidate Anies Baswedan challenged Prabowo Subianto’s decisive victory at the Constitutional Court on March 21, alleging rules were unfairly changed to allow the outgoing leader’s son to run as his vice president.

Anies’ call for a new vote comes a day after Defence Minister Prabowo, 72, was confirmed as the next leader of the world’s third-biggest democracy, beating former Jakarta governor Anies and a third rival with 58.6 percent of the vote.

But his campaign was mired in allegations that outgoing leader Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, had interfered in a bid to establish a political dynasty, engineering rules changes that allowed his eldest son Gibran Rakabuming Raka to run as Prabowo’s vice president.

“We asked for the disqualification of the vice presidential candidate… and we asked for a revote with that said VP candidate being replaced,” Anies’s legal chief Ari Yusuf Amir told AFP.

“We also asked the Constitutional Court to order the president to stop meddling in the next process of the election.”

An Anies campaign staffer told AFP on condition of anonymity that they would “provide the proof of intervention… and let the judges decide what to do with that.”

Earlier, Anies’ legal chief told reporters outside their campaign headquarters that they submitted an “election dispute petition” to the court online early Thursday morning.

Anies’s team has said the complain was aimed at improving future elections and bolstering Indonesia’s young democracy, which emerged from decades of autocratic rule in the late 1990s.

Jokowi was criticised after his brother-in-law, then-chief justice Anwar Usman, issued an October ruling lowering the age requirements for presidential and vice presidential candidates that allowed 36-year-old Gibran to run with Prabowo.

The requirements were lowered to allow candidates under 40 years of age to run if they have been elected to a political position. Gibran is the mayor of Surakarta city in Java.

Anies — who got 24.9 percent of the vote — refused to concede after official results were announced Wednesday, condemning the winner’s route to victory.

“Leadership that was born out of a process tainted by cheating and violations will result in a regime that will produce policies that are full of unfairness, and we don’t want this to happen,” he said in a statement.

Prabowo was widely predicted to win the presidency on his third attempt after losing in 2014 and 2019.

His legal team was confident the result would not be successfully challenged because of his majority and wide margin of victory, local media reported.

Officials from his campaign team did not respond to an AFP request for comment.

He takes over in October after a transition period.

Prabowo Subianto, a former special forces general with ties to Indonesia’s current President and past dictatorship, was confirmed the victor of last month’s presidential election over two former governors who have vowed to contest the result in court.

Mr. Subianto won 58.6% of the votes, while former Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan received 24.9% and former Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo got 16.5%, the General Election Commission said Wednesday after the official counting was completed.

In Indonesia, election disputes can be registered with the Constitutional Court during the three days that follow the announcement of official results.

The two other candidates have alleged fraud and irregularities in the election process, such as the vice presidential candidacy of President Joko Widodo’s son. The popular outgoing president is serving his second term and could not run again, but his son’s candidacy is seen as a sign of his tacit backing for Subianto.

Widodo’s son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, is 37 but became Subianto’s running mate after the Constitutional Court made an exception to the minimum age requirement of 40 for candidates. The Constitutional Court’s chief justice, who is Widodo’s brother-in-law, was then removed by an ethics panel for failing to recuse himself and for making last-minute changes to the election candidacy requirements.

Mr. Subianto, who is Widodo’s defense minister, had claimed victory on election day after unofficial tallies showed he was winning nearly 60% of the votes.

Editorial | A strongman at the helm: On Indonesia’s presidential election

Voter turnout for the Feb. 14 election in the world’s third-largest democracy was about 80%, the commission said.

Mr. Subianto won in 36 of 38 provinces and received 96.2 million votes compared to 40.9 million for Baswedan, the second-place finisher, who won in two provinces.

Mr. Baswedan, the former head of an Islamic university, won a massive majority in the conservative westernmost province of Aceh. His running mate was Muhaimin Iskandar, whose Islam-based National Awakening Party has strong ties with Indonesia’s largest Islamic organization.

Mr. Pranowo, the candidate of the governing Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, received 27 million votes and did not win any provinces.

Both Mr. Baswedan and Mr. Pranowo have refused to concede and said they plan to challenge the official results in the Constitutional Court.

Todung Mulya Lubis, a prominent lawyer who represents Mr. Pranowo and his running mate, Mohammad Mahfud MD, said election irregularities occurred before, during and after the polls.

Mr. Widodo has dismissed their fraud allegations and any manipulation of the judiciary or favoring of a particular pair of candidates, saying the election process was watched by many people, including representatives of the candidates, the election supervisory agency and security personnel.

“Layered supervision like this would eliminate possible fraud,” Widodo told reporters last month. “Don’t scream fraud. We have mechanisms to solve the fraud. If you have evidence, take it to the Election Supervisory Agency, if you have evidence, challenge it to the Constitutional Court.”

The campaign teams of both Mr. Baswedan and Mr. Pranowo said they would provide evidence for their claims.

Hasto Kristiyanto, the secretary-general of the party that nominated Pranowo, said election irregularities were enforced from the top down, including hefty social aid in the middle of an election that was far bigger than the amount during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Todung Mulya Lubis, a prominent lawyer who represents Pranowo and his running mate Mohammad Mahfud, said his team has had difficulty getting witnesses to testify in court due to intimidation by authorities. He acknowledged that successfully challenging the election result with such a wide official margin of victory will be difficult.

The ethics panel that removed Anwar Usman as the court’s chief justice allowed him to remain on the court under certain conditions, including banning him from involvement when the court adjudicates election disputes this year.

That means any such cases brought to the Constitutional Court would be decided by eight justices instead of the full nine-member court.

The new president will be inaugurated on Oct. 20 and will have to appoint a Cabinet within two weeks.

Subianto’s campaign highlighted the Widodo administration’s progress in reducing poverty and vowed to continue the modernization agenda that has brought rapid growth and vaulted Indonesia into the ranks of middle-income countries.

But other than promising continuity, Subianto has laid out few concrete plans for his own presidency, leaving observers uncertain about what his election will mean for the country’s growth and its still-maturing democracy.

Subianto lost two previous presidential elections to Widodo, and the Constitutional Court rejected his bids to overturn each of those results because of unfounded fraud allegations. This time, Subianto embraced the popular leader to run as his heir, even choosing Widodo’s son as his running mate, a choice that raised worries about an emerging dynastic rule in Indonesia’s 25-year-old democracy.

Their background and personalities are a sharp contrast. Subianto is known for his temper, unease with criticism, and fiery speeches. The soft-spoken Widodo has rarely shown anger in public.

Mr. Subianto comes from one of the country’s wealthiest families and his father was an influential politician who was a government minister under both the dictator Suharto and the country’s first president, Sukarno. Widodo rose to the presidency from a common background and as president often mingled with working-class crowds.

Questions also are still unanswered about Subianto’s alleged links to torture, disappearances and other human rights abuses in the final years of the brutal Suharto dictatorship, in which he served as a special forces lieutenant general.

It’s uncertain how Subianto will respond to political dissent, street protests and critical journalism, as many activists see his links to the Suharto regime as a threat.

Mr. Subianto was expelled by the army over accusations that he played a role in the kidnappings and torture of activists and other abuses. He never faced a trial and vehemently denies any involvement, although several of his men were tried and convicted.

Jakarta:

Indonesia’s Prabowo Subianto has been elected as president of the world’s third-biggest democracy, the elections commission said Wednesday, decisively beating two rivals who have vowed to file a legal complaint about the vote.

Defence Minister Prabowo and his vice-presidential running mate Gibran Rakabuming Raka received more than 96 million votes, commission chairman Hasyim Asy’ari said, roughly 58.6 percent of the total count and enough to secure a first-round majority.

Anies Baswedan secured nearly 41 million votes, or 24.9 percent of the total count, while Ganjar Pranowo received 27 million votes, more than 16 percent.

Prabowo and Gibran — the eldest son of outgoing leader Joko Widodo — already declared victory last month after unofficial counts showed them winning a majority.

Prabowo, 72, was widely predicted to win the presidency on his third attempt. He will take over the presidency in October after a transition period.

His popularity soared because of what experts said was his nationalist verve in populist speeches, strongman credentials as defence minister and backing from Widodo, more popularly known as Jokowi.

His rivals Anies and Ganjar have vowed to submit a complaint to the Constitutional Court about irregularities and allegations of fraud during the election.

But Prabowo’s legal team is confident the result will not be successfully challenged because of his majority and wide margin of victory, local media reported Tuesday.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)