[The victory represents a striking rise for Mr. Joko, 53, who was born
and raised in a riverside slum area in the city of Surakarta , also known as Solo, in Central Java Province Jakarta in 2012.]
By Joe Cochrane
 |
Mr. Joko is to be sworn in as
president on Oct. 20.
Credit Kemal Jufri for The
New York Times
|
But the announcement, while widely expected, did not end a simmering
controversy. His opponent, Prabowo Subianto, a retired army general, rejected
the results as fraudulent and said he was withdrawing from the race.
The General Elections Commission announced that Mr. Joko, with 53
percent of the vote, had beaten Mr. Prabowo, with 47 percent. Nearly 135
million Indonesians cast ballots in the emotionally charged July 9 election, in
which voters chose a new president for the first time in 10 years.
There was a huge police presence at the commission’s offices in Jakarta , theIndonesian,on Tuesday as the vote
tabulations were completed, amid rumors of violent street demonstrations by
disappointed supporters of Mr. Prabowo.
As the elections commission was finishing its count and preparing to
announce Mr. Joko as the winner, representatives of Mr. Prabowo’s campaign
staged a walkout at the commission’s offices. Shortly afterward, Mr. Prabowo
read an impassioned statement to supporters at his campaign headquarters, saying
he had withdrawn his candidacy and would reject the results.
“There has been a massive, structured and systematic fraud,” he said.But
on Tuesday night, his brother and chief adviser, Hashim Djojohadikusumo, said
Mr. Prabowo had not in fact withdrawn his candidacy, but was instead demanding
additional time for the elections commission to investigate “serious problems”
in both ballot casting and vote tabulations.
Commission officials, however, rejected his campaign’s allegations and
said a candidate’s withdrawal would have no bearing on the results.
Mr. Hashim said Mr. Prabowo’s campaign team had not yet decided whether
to appeal the election results to the Indonesian Constitutional Court .
“We want the K.P.U. to take a serious look at these irregularities,” Mr.
Hashim said, referring to the elections commission by its Indonesian
abbreviation.
The Constitutional Court has the sole authority to order recounts or
new voting at the provincial level and below, and its decisions are binding. The
court has two weeks to issue any decision should there be an appeal. But
analysts said it was highly unlikely that any ruling would overturn the final
national result, given the eight-million-vote margin of Mr. Joko’s victory.
What amounted to declarations of victory by both camps hours after the
polls closed led to weeks of uncertainty as the commission tabulated votes from
more than 480,000 polling stations. Mr. Joko is to be sworn in Oct. 20. He has
pledged to bring more “people-centric” governance and policies to Indonesia, which,
despite being a member of the G-20 group of major economies, has more than 100
million people living on $2 a day or less.
The victory represents a striking rise for Mr. Joko, 53, who was born
and raised in a riverside slum area in the city of Surakarta , also known as Solo, in Central Java Province Jakarta in 2012.
Mr. Joko, a thin, unassuming figure with what he has described as a
typical “village face,” will be Indonesia ’s seventh president and the first not to have
emerged from the country’s political elite or to have been an army general.
Mr. Prabowo, 62, was a son-in-law of Suharto, the authoritarian
president who was forced to resign in 1998 after 32 years in power amid pro-democracy
street demonstrations. Mr. Prabowo, a successful businessman who comes from a
prominent Javanese political family, has a checkered military record, including
allegations of human rights abuses as a commander of Indonesia ’s Special Forces and later as head of the
army’s strategic reserve command. He was denied a visa to enter the United States in 2000 and is believed to be on an
unofficial blacklist.
Sitting barefoot inside a small rented house in central Jakarta a few days before Tuesday’s announcement, Mr.
Joko said in an interview that Indonesia ’s continuing democratic transition had broken
the grip of the entrenched political elite on the government. Of crucial
importance to this, he said, was the introduction of direct elections from
president all the way down to town mayor a decade ago, as part of a national
decentralization policy that replaced Suharto’s centralized system of
governance.
Mr. Joko will lead a country that has successfully consolidated its
democracy and enjoyed strong economic growth under the departing president, Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono, who has served two five-year terms. Indonesia has had one of the fastest-growing economies
in Asia in recent years, along with China and India . But that same economy, which achieved annual
growth rates of more than 6 percent from 2010 to 2012, mostly thanks to the
country’s abundant natural resources and robust domestic consumption, is facing
several serious challenges.
They include a trade deficit, a national fuel subsidy that sucks tens of
billions of dollars each year from the state budget, inadequate infrastructure,
corruption, poverty and a growing disparity between the country’s rich and poor.
During the bruising presidential campaign, Mr. Prabowo characterized Mr.
Joko as an unsophisticated, small-town politician who lacked the ability to
lead a large nation. But Mr. Joko noted that he would be the only president in
Indonesian history to take office with prior experience in running a government.
“It’s about management,” Mr. Joko said. “How to plan, how to organize, how
to decide actions. In my opinion, the most important thing in governance is
management control.”
