Indonesia election 2024: will young voters be key in picking the right man on Valentine’s Day?
- The outcome of the three-way race could be determined by the turnout of voters for their respective candidates, analysts say
- This year’s election has been dogged by controversies including perceived meddling by President Joko Widodo and the Constitutional Court
The organisation of the world’s largest single-day election is no easy feat given the challenge of reaching out to voters living across Indonesia’s vast archipelago comprising over 17,000 islands.
To make this single-day vote possible, election commission officials, alongside armed guards, are travelling far and wide using boats, planes and even helicopters, to transport ballot boxes and papers across the country, including to remote outlying islands.
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In Sumatra’s Aceh province, organisers were still debating using elephants to carry ballot boxes over tough terrains, according to an Agence France-Presse report. And in Lampung province, election officials have cows on standby to drag ballot boxes through mud tracks to and from polling stations.
Horses will be tasked with bringing ballots to a remote village in the southeast corner of Java island in case of bad weather, the report added.
Weather also presents a tricky challenge, with the risks of heavy rain and flooding a cause for concern. In Central Java, election officials on Monday said they were pondering postponing voting in Karanganyar district due to heavy flooding in the area.
Valentine’s Day
To encourage higher voter turnout, the government has designated February 14th as a public holiday in Indonesia.
Although voting is not mandatory, the country typically witnesses significant public participation on election day, with previous elections recording a turnout of over 70 per cent.
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This year, 52 per cent of registered voters are under 40 and almost one-third of all voters are under 30, so securing the vote of the youth bloc has been a strong focus for all the candidates.
With election day falling on the same date as Valentine’s Day, many young people are using the coincidence to encourage others to vote.
One video, showing the three presidential candidates, is captioned, “Don’t have a boyfriend, don’t worry. On Valentine’s Day, you can choose one of these men,”
Another similar video says: “What is Valentine’s Day? Indonesian [people], choose your pick!”
Fears of violence
The 2019 election was particularly tumultuous as Prabowo contested the results of the count on election day and refused to concede, prompting riots in Jakarta that resulted in eight deaths and hundreds injured.
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While observers said the violence then was shocking, they warned of a possibility of tensions escalating following Wednesday’s vote if there is a challenge to the count by any of the candidates.
This election has been dogged by controversies, primarily around the role played by Widodo in leveraging his influence over state institutions to garner support for his rival-turned-ally Prabowo.
Widodo’s tacit support for his son and Prabowo’s ticket has led to increasingly vocal criticism from pro-democracy activists, academics and student groups, who see his meddling as an effort to extend his influence in Indonesian politics beyond the end of his term.
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A documentary released over the weekend by investigative journalist Dandhy Laksono, titled Dirty Vote, has also fanned the flames with allegations that state officials had used welfare resources to sway voters towards Prabowo.
While the government has denied social welfare is being used to curry favour with any candidate, hundreds of students and activists staged protests on Monday in Jakarta and Yogyakarta, accusing Widodo of abusing his power.
Around 25,000 anti-riot personnel will be deployed by Indonesia’s police to ensure security at the election this year.
No clear outcome
In another reference to the Valentine’s Day gag, some TikTok users are also posting videos asking whether they will receive chocolates as serangan fajar, a term for incentives given to voters by political parties to win their support.
The phrase translates as ‘dawn attack’, as the offer of these gifts - often monetary - had come on the morning of past elections.
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Party machines are likely to pull out all the stops to encourage voters to make it to polling stations, with observers saying voter turnout is expected to decide whether Prabowo could win the election in a single round by crossing over the 50 per cent threshold of the vote count. The latest polls show him at around 51 per cent voter support.
For Anies and Ganjar, their best chance of securing the presidency lies in denying Prabowo a one-round victory and taking the election to a run-off.
If none of the candidates receives a simple majority of more than 50 per cent of the votes, a second round of voting between Wednesday’s first and second-placed candidates will be held on June 26.
With additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
