Indonesia’s Presidential Elections Are an Exercise in Nepotism

Indonesia’s front-running presidential candidates made an incongruous pair as they stood side by side, wearing matching blue shirts, on the army-green jeep driving slowly through a cheering crowd in Jakarta in late October. Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto, 72 years old, was short and stout as ever as he arrived at the General Elections Commission to register himself as a candidate for the 2024 presidential election, his third attempt at the post. His running mate, a fresh-faced 36-year-old Gibran Rakabuming, son of President Joko Widodo aka Jokowi, was gamely shaking hands with supporters in the crowd—perhaps still enjoying the sense of adulation following his dizzying ascent from mayor of a small city to national figure.

Gibran is running alongside Prabowo, the former son-in-law of the dictator Suharto, and old-school dynastic politics is back in fashion in Indonesia. The driving force is Jokowi himself. Once seen as an outsider and a symbol of political change in Indonesia, Jokowi is now resorting to the usual methods of the country’s oligarchy as he looks to remain a power player once he leaves office.

Nepotism has been a potent force in Indonesian politics for decades, and personal clout often matters more than parties or ideology. Under Suharto, his children emerged as key power brokers, his daughter Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana serving as deputy chair of the ruling Golkar party and briefly as a minister.

Even as the fall of Suharto’s regime sidelined his clan and democratization opened space for new figures to rise, powerful old families persisted. The new arrivals made their peace with them and quickly went about entrenching the influence of their families. Of the nine political parties represented in Indonesia’s parliament, four are led by relatives of former presidents and a fifth by the son of a prominent former minister.

Of the three presidential tickets, none can claim to be free of dynasticism either, though Prabowo and Gibran’s is the most blatant. Ganjar Pranowo, polling second, is a clean skin as the son of a humble policeman. But his candidacy relies on the nomination of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P)—the fiefdom of Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of Indonesia’s first president, Sukarno, and herself the fifth president of Indonesia.

Trailing in third but still a credible challenger, Anies Baswedan is the grandson of a cabinet minister. His running mate is related to  former President Abdurrahman Wahid, and has been close to him since childhood. Jokowi once ran as a reformier. Yet his own ascent meant forging pacts with Indonesia’s oligarchy—most prominently Megawati, whose party he joined and who would nominate him as a presidential candidate in 2014. Now, as he leaves office, the nomination of Gibran, and the creation of his own dynasty, is perhaps the logical final step of Jokowi’s gradual integration into traditional Indonesian politics.

Publicly, Jokowi has admitted that he gave Gibran his blessing but denied being involved in the actual making of the decision, saying it was not a parent’s place to meddle in their children’s lives. But few believe this. Gibran’s nomination is formally the choice of Prabowo, endorsed by the coalition of parties backing his presidential bid. Without his father’s name, Gibran’s only claim to political significance is as mayor of Surakarta, his father’s old position.

While Gibran’s name was floated as a potential vice presidential pick in the months running up to his nomination, many viewed the choice as a long shot. Until just days before the nomination, he was not even eligible to run, falling short of the minimum age of 40 for vice presidents. That changed just three days before the registration period opened, thanks to a Constitutional Court ruling that created an exception for people with prior experience in certain elected offices. The fact that the head of the Constitutional Court is married to Jokowi’s sister did not pass unnoticed. On 7 November he was even suspended as the chief justice, though not removed from the court, by an ethics panel – though the decision itself still stands.

Indeed, Jokowi has publicly promised to “meddle” in the election for the good of the country. Behind the scenes, he has acted to push parties into Prabowo’s electoral coalition. Until recently, many voters believed he backed Ganjar, a former governor of Central Java, who was eventually nominated by the PDI-P, of which Jokowi is formally a member. But, with Gibran’s nomination, Jokowi’s preferences are now clear.

The most immediate problem Jokowi now faces is the rupture between him and the PDI-P. Jokowi has been a member of the party since he entered politics in the early 2000s. Both sides benefited from the relationship: Jokowi securing the patronage of Indonesia’s most potent party and the PDI-P getting a president from the party.

However, the relationship has also been marked by tensions between Jokowi and the party’s leader, Megawati. Megawati has long signaled a degree of resentment and worry as Jokowi’s brand eclipsed her own and that of her party. Meanwhile, Jokowi’s swing toward Prabowo is suspected to be linked to his worries that Ganjar—a party cadre since the 1990s—is too much under her thumb.

With the nomination of Gibran, the tensions are more visible than ever before. Gibran is entered politics as a member of the PDI-P, but appears to have now been expelled. Senior PDI-P members have also made pointed comments all but accusing Jokowi of improperly influencing the Constitutional Court and party leaders to pave the way for Gibran’s nomination.

Still, for the moment, both sides are avoiding a full breach. “Jokowi is feeling confident in his relationship with PDI-P,” said Noory Okthariza, a researcher at Indonesia’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “All political elites outside the PDI-P are under his control, and he’s got very high public approval. So, PDI-P are kind of reluctant to make clear distance between them and him.” A public feud with the immensely popular president could hurt the party in the parliamentary elections that will be held concurrently with the first round of the presidential election.

Even more fundamental is the question of whether the public is prepared to swallow the Prabowo-Gibran ticket. By selecting Gibran, Prabowo likely hopes to benefit by reinforcing his association with the wildly popular president. A July survey by LSI found that Jokowi had an astonishing approval rating of 81.9 percent. Gibran also benefited electorally from his father’s brand in 2020, when he was elected mayor of Surakarta with 86.5 percent of the vote. Others suggest he might even be an asset in his own right. “Gibran represents millennial and Generation Z voters, who in 2024 will have a vote share of more than 53 percent,” Budiman Sudjatmiko said. A former democracy activist imprisoned under Suharto, Budiman shocked many when he left the PDI-P this year to endorse Prabowo; he is, in many ways, a symbol of the unlikely Jokowi-Prabowo merger.

However, there are reasons to be skeptical about his chances. None of the three candidates looks likely to secure a majority in the first vote on Feb. 14. This will prompt a runoff in June. “A lot can happen in eight months. That’s why I think two-name polls are basically meaningless at this stage,” said Seth Soderborg, a polling expert at SNS Analytics. The Prabowo-Gibran ticket will also face accusations of naked dynasticism. Some supporters attempt to downplay this. “Dynasty is not the right word for this condition because, in the democratic process, in the end it is the people who determine the winner of national leadership,” Budiman said. Prabowo, however, seems to have not gotten the message. When quizzed about how his father and grandfather had both served in eminent government positions, he simply declared: “We belong to a dynasty where our family always fights for the people. What’s wrong with that? Don’t politicize it.”

With Jokowi’s other son, Kaesang Pangarep, becoming head of the Indonesian Solidarity Party in September and his son-in-law serving as mayor of Medan, the sense that the Jokowi clan is looking to perpetuate their power is hard to escape.

So far, polls have offered contradictory evidence. A survey by Populi Center showed the Prabowo-Gibran surging with 43.1 percent support, compared with 23 percent for the Ganjar ticket and 22 percent for Anies’s ticket. But a survey by Charta Politika that took place in late October showed Ganjar edging ahead, backed by 36.8 percent of voters to Prabowo’s 34.7 percent in three-way race. The survey also found that 48.9 percent of voters felt it was not appropriate for Gibran to be nominated as a vice presidential candidate—though the majority of objectors cited his youth and inexperience, as opposed to a dislike of dynasties or a sense that Jokowi had abused his power in securing the nomination.

While cautioning that there has been little polling, Soderborg thinks Gibran may well prove a drag. “I don’t think the Prabowo campaign can make him [Gibran] into an electoral asset,” he said. “The question is, how much of a liability is he? If it’s just a small one, they’re calculating it’s a price worth paying—and that they can afford based on the head-to-head polling.”

Soderborg adds that public awareness about Gibran’s likely nomination was relatively low at this stage. Recent polls showed that only one-third of Indonesians were even aware of the Constitutional Court ruling. Still, he expects this to rise. “Obviously, the Ganjar and Anies campaigns can try [to] make people aware of that and present it damagingly.”

Indeed, while some, like Budiman, have gravitated toward Prabowo, for many reform-minded Indonesians this development has finally cemented their slow disenchantment with Jokowi. Elected in 2014 on a wave of popular enthusiasm, Jokowi was the first Indonesian president since the end of the dictatorship not to come from an elite background, and he leaned into this, speaking of the need for further reform. The fact that his opponent was Prabowo, whose campaign promoted accusations that Jokowi was a communist and not a Muslim, only burnished his halo.

Yet, to come to power and then implement his ambitious programs—including universal health care and massive infrastructure building—Jokowi had to compromise with the Indonesian oligarchy. Being nominated to run as president meant securing the patronage of Megawati. Assembling and controlling a governing—and later overwhelming—majority in parliament meant handing out patronage and even defanging the popular anti-corruption agency. In 2019, when Prabowo denied the presidential election results and sparked a riot, Jokowi defused the crisis by making Prabowo defense minister.

“Local elites also leverage on patronage and clientelism,” said Noory, the CSIS researcher. The example at the ground level is then transmitted to the top. “I do think Gibran’s selection could worsen this problem by setting this sort of example at a national level,” he added.

Jokowi seems quietly reluctant to leave power. Last year and this year saw figures close to the palace repeatedly proposing ways that Jokowi could evade his constitutionally mandated retirement in 2024. Some advocated that the constitution should be amended to let him run for a third term. Others suggested extending his time in office for two years to “make up for” time lost to the pandemic. Ultimately, Megawati seems to have blocked the idea.

The basic problem for Jokowi is that while his personal brand is extremely strong, the fact that he does not control the party he is a member of makes it harder for him to exert leverage after he leaves the top job. In this context, backing Gibran for the position of vice president makes a degree of sense. A family member is best positioned to cash in on Jokowi’s star power. Plus, as the only office not serving at the president’s pleasure, it guarantees Jokowi a voice in a Prabowo administration. And when it comes to carrying out your wishes, who can you trust if not your own relatives?