More than 200 million Indonesians will vote next Wednesday. It will be the largest single-day election on earth, a colossally complex snarl of democracy spanning 6000 inhabited islands and requiring more workers than there are Queenslanders.
Credit:
Though not compelled to cast a ballot, citizens of the booming archipelago are expected to turn out at close to 80 per cent, filing through some 820,000 polling stations to elect more 20,000 regional and national legislators.
The main show, however, is the presidency, a three-cornered contest of modest reform commitments thick with dynastic politics and matters of legacy.
For the first time in a decade, Indonesians will choose someone other than Joko Widodo, the man commonly known as Jokowi.
The former furniture maker who bent politics to his will with selective fealty to democracy and a popular brand of everyman pragmatism is constitutionally barred from a third term. He will begrudgingly leave office in October.
His successor will play an outsized role in shaping the security, trade and diplomacy in an increasingly uncertain Indo-Pacific. Indonesia is the world’s third-largest democracy.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo in Sydney in July.Credit: Reuters
“I think it’s a challenging time for [Indonesia] and it could really end in a number of different directions, some more democratic and others much more autocratic,” says Ian Wilson, an Indonesia politics expert at Murdoch University.
“That’s definitely of importance to Australia and the region. And probably quite a difficult line for the Australian government to tread in terms of a Prabowo presidency. He can be pretty prickly. He’s a populist. He’s constantly beating the drum of foreign meddling and foreign conspiracies.”
The world’s biggest election is next week. This is why it matters
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09.02.2024
More than 200 million Indonesians will vote next Wednesday. It will be the largest single-day election on earth, a colossally complex snarl of democracy spanning 6000 inhabited islands and requiring more workers than there are Queenslanders.
Credit:
Though not compelled to cast a ballot, citizens of the booming archipelago are expected to turn out at close to 80 per cent, filing through some 820,000 polling stations to elect more 20,000 regional and........
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