Despite President Joko Widodo being the clear winner in last Wednesday’s election (based upon the quick count results which are being further validated by the ongoing real count), Indonesia’s post-election drama is far from over, with supporters of Prabowo Subianto continuing to echo their candidate’s unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.
A few hundred of Prabowo’s supporters came to the headquarters of the Election Advisory Commission (Bawaslu) in Jakarta today around noon for a protest event called “Petisi Rakyat Tolak Pemilu Curang” (Petition of the People Rejecting Election Fraud) that was promoted on social media by the hardline Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) as well as affiliated Islamist groups that strongly backed Prabowo in the election.
https://twitter.com/FPI_Petamburan/status/1120761354363629574?fbclid=IwAR26Cy7Z2N-3zVs46IltZCJZC56JjhQczROJJVD-azKKfUnRSe8-wNvNX5w
Although the FPI flyer above says the protest would be followed by another event in support of Prabowo’s election “victory”, it also includes a note at the end advising those who wish to attend not to use any “attributes” (logos, signs, clothing etc) bearing the names of the candidates or any ormas (the Indonesian term for mass organizations i.e. civil society groups such as FPI).
Indeed, presenting at least a thin pretense of impartiality towards the candidates seemed to be important to the protest’s organizers. Tempo quoted one organizer, Abu Jibril Fuad, as saying, “Essentially we just want honest and clean elections,” adding, “Don’t associate us with a particular candidate pair”.
But, as can clearly be seen in this video of the protest, in which a speaker yells about the unfairness of the election from atop a truck clearly bearing FPI’s logo, attempts to make the protest not look like a pro-Prabowo rally achieved mixed results at best. It was not helped by the presence of Ferry Juliantono from Prabowo’s Gerindra Party and politician Ahmad Yani from PBB either.
Shortly after Prabowo declared “victory” for the first time on Wednesday, National Police Chief Tito Karnavian warned against any large-scale political gatherings in public until the official election results came in, saying, “We won’t tolerate it. I urge everyone against mass demonstrations, whether it’s to celebrate or to express dissatisfaction.”
But today’s protest at Bawaslu seems to have been done with the foreknowledge of the police, who deployed around 1,000 officers to secure the demo.
The primary messaging of the speakers was to echo Prabowo and his campaign’s unsubstantiated claims of widespread and systemic election fraud. They also called upon Bawaslu, in their supervisory capacity, to investigate and possibly disband the General Election Commission (KPU) for its biased handling of the election.
A few representatives of the protesters reportedly met with Bawaslu officials to voice their demands and present their evidence for voter fraud.
Despite his multiple claims to victory, Prabowo has implied that he would wait for the results of the KPU real count (due on or before May 22) before taking further action. If he loses in the real count there’s a chance he could try to challenge the results in the Constitutional Court as he did in 2014 when he lost to President Jokowi the first time. However, that ended with Prabowo’s challenge being dismissed by the court, eventually forcing Prabowo to say he was withdrawing from the electoral process in protest of its manipulation — a way of conceding defeat without admitting defeat.
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