Indonesian Elections
Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo has beaten rival Prabowo Subianto to win a second term in office, the country’s elections commission has said.The commission was expected to announce the official results on Wednesday, 22 nd May, but
in a surprise move, it released the final result early on Tuesday (21 st May).
Widodo – widely known as Jokowi – and his vice-presidential running mate, Maruf Amin, won the election by a 55.5 percent to 44.5 percent margin over rival Prabowo. This election was the world’s largest single day election. Around 80 percent of the 193 million voters of Indonesia voted on 17 th April to elect the president of the country. Although the results are announced, Prabowo and his party are not ready to accept the result of the elections. They are saying that there has been widespread cheating and that
they will challenge the official election result in the Constitutional Court. They warned that there could be demonstrations on the street to challenge the result. Some 32,000 security personnel have been deployed across the capital city of Jakarta to prevent any violence. Probowo even lost the 2014 elections to Widodo and unsuccessfully challenged in it court.