Presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto is famous for many things besides politics, such as his marriage to Suharto’s second daughter, his service to Indonesia as a former general, his propensity for taking his shirt off in public and his love of riding horses.
According to one police official, when Prabowo goes to cast his vote for himself tomorrow (for the second time) he’s planning to exhibit his equestrian skills once more by riding one of his many steeds to the polling station.
He will be voting at polling station 41 in Bojong Koneng Village of Bogor, which is also the location of Prabowo’s home-away-from-home in Hambalang. The Bogor Police have already prepared additional security for the polling station.
In confirming the news, Babakan Madang Police Chief Wawan Wahyudin noted Prabowo’s plans to use his equine transport on the day of the election.
“Yes, it is certain that Pak Prabowo will cast a vote at TPS (polling station) 41, when going to the location the plan is that he will use or ride a horse to the polling station,” Wawan said as quoted by Sindonews.
However, Wawan backtracked a bit later when asked by reporters about Prabowo’s horse riding, saying that is the information that he had received but that the plans could still change.
When he was running for president against Joko Widodo for the first time in 2014, there were rumors Prabowo would ride a horse to his polling station in Bojong Koneng Village as well (he had famously ridden a horse at an earlier campaign event), but, in the end, he rode to the TPS in a Lexus.
Perhaps Prabowo will go with the horse this time in hopes his vote won’t be for naught yet again. But it’ll take much more than good fortune on the day of for Prabowo to emerge victorious tomorrow as the vast majority of polls put Jokowi so far ahead of Prabowo that the incumbent’s victory is all but assured, statistically speaking.
