JAKARTA – Some months ago, the word out of presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto’s camp was that he saw a potential team-up with President Joko Widodo’s eldest son as a golden ticket that would virtually guarantee the defense minister’s victory in next February’s presidential race.
Despite the controversy over the crass way the candidacy of 36-year-old Solo town mayor Gibran Rakabuming was engineered, that view apparently didn’t change. On October 22, the boyish businessman was officially announced as Prabowo’s running mate.
Prabowo reportedly had second thoughts because of the storm of criticism on social media and elsewhere over the October 16 Constitutional Court’s ruling that allowed Gibran and other elected officials, regardless of age, to run as president or vice president.
According to Katadata, a local online media, data and research company, Prabowo wanted to wait for a report to assess the damage that might have been done, even rejecting what it said was a “direct order” from the administration’s “top brass” to immediately declare Gibran his running mate on the day of the ruling.
The move will almost certainly lead to open warfare between Widodo and Megawati Sukarnoputri, leader of the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle (PDI-P) which the president, Gibran and his youngest son, Kaesang Pangarep, have all ostensibly belonged to up until now.
Kaesang, 28, was the first member of the family to openly break with PDI-P by assuming leadership of the small Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI), which will contest February’s simultaneous legislative election.
The highest court’s decision to change the electoral law alarmed political activists and a broad swathe of the Jakarta elite, particularly considering Widodo’s brother-in-law Anwar Usman was the chief justice who presided over the lightning-rod ruling.
They see the decision tailored specifically for one family and a potential threat to democracy. But such is Widodo’s popularity, clear-minded observers say the broad mass of the electorate – and Widodo’s massive following – is unlikely to care less.
An Indonesian Survey Institution (LSI) poll, which had Prabowo leading PDI-P candidate Ganjar Pranowo by 35.8% to 30.9%, also revealed that 41.8% agreed with Gibran forming a partnership with Prabowo for his third and now surely his best shot at the presidency.
With his feigned neutrality wearing thin, Widodo will sooner or later have to get off the fence. Certainly, continuing to act as a neutral onlooker hardly convinces anyone. “His (Gibran’s) parents’ job is only to pray and approve,” he told reporters in a rare comment on his children’s political ambitions.
He also claimed Gibran’s bid for the vice presidency was his own personal matter and that he didn’t want to influence his decision. “We should not interfere too much in the affairs that have been decided by our children,” Widodo said.
The next minute, however, he was pouring cold water on the whole idea. “First of all, think of his age,” he said of the youthful mayor who could find himself a heartbeat away from the presidency. “Moreover, he has only been mayor for two years. C’mon, be logical.”
“Prabowo wasn’t sure himself about what the chief wanted and whether he was insisting on his son entering the race or not,” says one source within the retired general’s coalition, explaining why other figures remained in the frame as possible running mates until the final weeks.
Some analysts believe Prabowo’s so-called “golden ticket” is not only aimed at beating PDI-P’s Pranowo, 54, and his running mate Mahfud Mahmodin, 66, but also handing Megawati a defeat the 76-year-old matriarch and her family will never recover from.
Losing the presidential election may be one thing, but a serious decline in PDI-P’s fortunes, which have stood up surprisingly well in the polls up to now, would be quite another for a party that has dominated through the democratic era that commenced with dictator Suharto’s fall in 1998.
Keeping alive the name of her father, founding president Sukarno and the nationalist ideology he espoused, has often appeared more important to her than any presidential race.
Patron of the second-ranked Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), Prabowo is expected to rely heavily on Widodo’s endorsement and on his army of supporters who have already pledged their support.
He has a strong following in East Java, but the Widodo name will also give him solid backing in the PDI-P’s stronghold of Central Java, two vote-rich provinces that together could hold the balance of power.
“We have reached a point of no return,” says the coalition source. There’s going to be a war between the parties at all different levels going down to the villages. Central Java is going to be a battleground.”
The retired general could also do well in West Java. Popular former provincial governor Ridwan Hamid is now a member of Golkar, which along with the Democrat and National Mandate (PAN) parties form Prabowo’s Forward Indonesia Coalition (KIM).
Golkar may have helped Prabowo make up his mind after the court decision by moving swiftly to endorse Gibran as KIM’s vice presidential candidate during an internal gathering on October 21, which the mayor attended.
Without touching on the controversy surrounding the Constitutional Court case or the candidate’s political pedigree, Golkar chairman and chief economic minister Airlangga Hartarto pointed to Gibran being representative of Indonesia’s younger generation, about 56% of which is below the age of 40.
It is not clear to what extent Prabowo relied on the advice of his allies in making his final choice, though it is understood PAN supported State Enterprise Minister Erick Thohir, another Widodo acolyte and chairman of the Indonesia Football Association.
Political sources say Hartarto was firmly opposed to Thohir because of their conflicts in the Cabinet and Prabowo appears to have had reservations of his own. In the end, Prabowo declared the choice of Gibran was “unanimous”, although the mayor was not present at the announcement.
The father of two children, Gibran obtained a bachelor’s degree from the Management Institute of Singapore and in 2010 established a catering service in his hometown of Solo instead of joining his father’s successful furniture business.
Four years later, he started a chain of stores selling martabak, a traditional stuffed pancake, which left him with a personal wealth he put at 22 billion rupiah (US$1.4 million) when he ran successfully as a PDI-P candidate for the mayoralty of Solo in 2020.
Megawati had wanted Gibran to wait his turn after the party’s Solo branch nominated the city’s deputy mayor for the job. But Gibran persisted, the party finally relented and he won by an 83% landslide.
At the same time, Widodo’s son-in-law, Bobby Nasution, 29, took over the mayoralty in his hometown of Medan, the provincial capital of North Sumatra, by a much slimmer margin, defeating incumbent Akhyar Nasution, 54, who previously had been supported by PDI-P.
While it may be a huge step to rise to vice president at such a young age, analysts believe the success of Gibran’s future career may lie in the longevity of his father’s influence beyond the day he steps down next October.
Little is widely known about his interests or about where he stands on substantive domestic and foreign issues. But it has to be assumed that he will prove to the guardian of his father’s legacy, including his grand plan to build a new national capital.
Unlike the Philippines, dynasties are not so popular in Indonesia. In fact, electoral history has shown that voters often go out of their way to prevent incumbents from trying to get their husbands, wives or children to succeed them.
One survey taken three years ago found that 61% of respondents were opposed to dynasties, a view borne out in 2018 when two sons and a daughter all failed to succeed their fathers as governors of West Kalimantan, East Kalimantan and South Sumatra.
As in other countries, partial family dynasties are not uncommon at the national level in Indonesia, starting with House of Representatives Speaker Puan Maharani, 47, Megawati’s daughter and granddaughter of founding president Sukarno.
Then there’s Agus Yudhoyono, 42, former president Susilo Yudhoyono’s eldest son who bowed to his father’s wishes and left a promising career in the military to mount what turned out to be a disastrous bid for the Jakarta governorship in 2017.
Maharani clearly does not have what it takes to become president and the political fortunes of Agus, now chairman of his father’s Democrat Party, rest on whether the party can win back seats it’s lost in the 575-seat Parliament.
None of Megawati’s other three children are active in politics, although her reclusive son, Prananda, writes the PDI-P matriarch’s speeches, and her niece, Puti Guntur Soekarno, 49, holds a House seat representing Surabaya and Sidoarjo in East Java.
Yudhoyono’s second son, Edhie Baskoro Yudhoyono, 42, is on his third parliamentary term without making much of a mark, reportedly one reason why the ex-president turned to his older brother to carry the family banner in the Jakarta gubernatorial election.