FILE PHOTO: Indonesia’s Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto gestures as he attends a meeting of his Gerindra party, in Bogor, Indonesia August 12, 2022. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan/File Photo
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FILE PHOTO: Indonesia’s Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto gestures as he attends a meeting of his Gerindra party, in Bogor, Indonesia August 12, 2022. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan/File Photo
Discharged from the military over speculation about human rights abuses, exiled to Jordan and banned from traveling to the United States due to his alleged dark past, Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto is now in pole position to be the next Indonesian leader.
The two-time presidential loser announced on Sunday that he would run for the third time in the February elections, with President Joko Widodo’s son as his vice-presidential candidate.
“We are ready to move forward for Indonesia,” Prabowo told a news conference.
The former special forces commander has undergone a remarkable transformation since being named defense minister in 2019, cultivating a more charismatic personality than a fiery, pious nationalist, analysts say.
A former son-in-law of the late strongman President Suharto, Prabowo is accused of involvement in the 1998 kidnapping of student activists and rights abuses in Papua and East Timor. The allegations are unproven and Prabowo has always denied responsibility.
As the 72-year-old prepares for the election campaign, the numbers suggest his rebranding is paying off.
An opinion poll released this month by Lembaga Survei Indonesia (LSI) shows Prabowo ahead of his two opponents with 34% support.
In a two-way race against his closest competitor, former regional governor Ganjar Pranowo, he had an 11-point lead.
“His chances of winning are now the greatest,” said Djayadi Hanan of LSI. “Part of that is the president’s support.”
Unable to run after serving the maximum two terms, Widodo, better known as Jokowi, signaled support for his once-bitter foe. Jokowi defeated Prabowo in the 2014 and 2019 elections.
With his 36-year-old son as a possible vice president, Jokowi is seeking to retain some influence within the government, analysts say.
By appointing Prabowo to his cabinet in 2019, Jokowi provided the former general with a level of validation and visibility that he previously lacked, such as seeing his de facto travel ban to the United States erased in 2020 during his visit to the Pentagon.
As minister, Prabowo embarked on an ambitious modernization of the country’s aging military hardware, signing defense deals in Europe, the United States and the Middle East, with the red carpet rolled out for him from Paris to Beijing.
‘IMAGE CREATION MACHINE’
For his nearly 6 million followers on Instagram, Prabowo’s profile is regularly updated with snapshots of his daily work, interspersed with offerings from his cats, artistic black and white portraits and vintage family photographs of his parents and his childhood.
From an elite Indonesian family, Prabowo’s father was a prominent economist and minister under Suharto, and his brother, Hashim Djojohadikusumo, is a successful businessman. In 1983, the military’s rising star married Suharto’s daughter, Siti Hediati Hariyadi, but they separated soon after the autocratic president’s ouster in 1998.
Prabowo also went into exile in Jordan at this time.
“Prabowo’s team is clearly presenting Prabowo in a ‘softer’ way in an attempt to convince undecided voters. This is a change from previous campaigns where we saw Prabowo nationalist populist and Prabowo pro-Islamist,” said the party’s Ross Tapsell. Australian National University.
As the campaign intensifies, the question is whether this approach continues.
“In 2019, he started off quite politely and calmly, and by the end he was claiming the election was rigged,” Tapsell added.
Prabowo’s appointment to the cabinet in 2019 was seen at the time as a way for Jokowi to heal political divisions.
Another sign of the image makeover, in a recent television interview with journalist Najwa Shihab, the former general, known for his legendary character, appeared humorous and avuncular.
Referring to his time as a soldier, Prabowo said: “Maybe I felt like I was tough, scary. I’m not afraid anymore, am I? he said.
When Shihab claimed he was just a politician, he joked that maybe he wasn’t a good politician because he “kept losing.”
“He obviously has very savvy public relations people who helped shape his image. He was much more restrained in direct interviews and avoided open press conferences,” said Andreas Harsono, a researcher on the Indonesia to Human Rights Watch.
With more than 100 million Indonesians under the age of 40 registered for elections next February, all candidates are vying for the millennial vote.
Many, Harsono said, are too young to know the details of the accusations against Prabowo, which he said are no longer widely reported in Indonesian media.
“The younger generation doesn’t know much about what Prabowo did in Jakarta, East Timor and Papua,” he said.
“He was never held accountable.”
