It’s a little of hard to remember now, given their recent media-friendly horseback rides together, but the 2014 presidential election between Joko WIdodo and Prabowo Subianto was a bitter, hard fought campaign. Well, we might very well get a refresher on their political animosity in two years as it looks like the Gerindra chairman has the backing of most of his party’s officials to take on the incumbent in the 2019 presidential election.
“I think Gerindra needs to nominate [a presidential candidate for 2019] and the majority would like to nominate Pak Prabowo in 2019. I think it is necessary as part of the struggle for Gerindra to move forward, ie to nominate him to be president,” Gerindra deputy chairman Fadli Zon said at the Parliament Complex yesterday as quoted by Kompas.
Prabowo, for his part, has not declared his intent to run against Jokowi once again. At a Gerindra party meeting on Sunday, Jakarta Vice Gubernatorial candidate Sandiaga Uno and other party officials declared their hope that Prabowo would be the country’s next president. However, when asked about it by reporters after the meeting, Prabowo simply replied, “2019 is still far away, we’ll see later.”
Fadli said that Prabowo’s muted response was simply due to the lack of official consensus amongst his party, but the Gerindra deputy chairman said that he was sure Prabowo was ready to do what was needed for the sake of the nation even if another run might be difficult for him.
Fadli also said the party could officially nominate Prabowo as their presidential candidate pick at any time and that they might do so sometime in the near future, long before the next presidential election season.
Considering the size of the Gerindra coalition, it is highly likely that whoever they choose as their presidential candidate will be the only challenger to Jokowi. But the election is still far too in the future for us to speculate beyond that.
Actually, what the hell. According to a poll taken in October 2015 gauging the electability of various potential presidential candidates, Jokowi received 36.1% of the votes and Prabowo got 28%. (Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama came in third with 4.9% of the votes).
Since then Jokowi’s popularity has only grown, with one survey from September 2016 putting his approval rating at 66%.
A lot can happen between now and 2019, but it’s pretty clear that if Prabowo were to challenge Jokowi today the contest would be much more lopsided than their last bout.
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