Indonesia presidential frontrunner Prabowo faces heat as rivals attack military spending plans
The defence minister is grilled over plan to buy 12 used fighter jets from Qatar
[JAKARTA] The frontrunner in Indonesia’s upcoming presidential election, Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto, continues to top opinion polls ahead of the Feb 14 vote where some 204 million people will cast their ballots to pick the country’s new leader.
The 72-year-old Prabowo was involved in a lively debate with his two challengers for the top job – former Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowo, 55, and former Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan, 54 – where they discussed defence, geopolitics and diplomacy, among other topics.
They are vying to succeed incumbent Joko Widodo as the leader of South-east Asia’s largest economy. Widodo completes his second and final term in October and is constitutionally barred from running for re-election.
Third-time candidate Prabowo – who has picked Widodo’s 36-year-old son Gibran Rakabuming Raka as his running mate to be the vice-president – has enjoyed consistently high approval numbers over the last few months, with the pair’s rating getting closer to the 50 per cent mark.
According to a survey by Indikator Politik Indonesia on Dec 26, the Prabowo-Gibran pair had a rating of 46.7 per cent.
Ganjar and his running mate Mahfud MD was far behind in second with 24.5 per cent, with Anies and his VP candidate Muhaimin Iskandar in third with 21 per cent. About 7.8 per cent of those polled said that they were undecided about whom to vote for.
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The debate on Sunday – the third out of five scheduled debates by Indonesia’s General Elections Commission – got heated at times, as Ganjar and Anies took turns to grill Prabowo on Indonesia’s defence spending and his military procurement strategy. The trio also sparred on other issues such as foreign debt risks and how to settle territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
Anies took aim at Prabowo‘s plans to procure used military equipment from abroad, including a fleet of 12 Mirage 2000-5 fighter jets from Qatar for US$792 million. A defence ministry spokesperson said recently, however, that this plan would be delayed due to fiscal constraints.
“Debts should be used for productive activities and not for non-productive activities, such as buying used military equipment,” said Anies.
Prabowo, a former special forces commander, replied that the strategy to buy used hardware was crucial to modernise Indonesia’s armed forces. The jets, which are 15 years old, have a lifespan of between 25 and 30 years.
“The narrative about using used equipment, I think, is misleading. The important thing is flying hours,” he noted. “In reality we need equipment to cover the current gap,” he added, explaining that buying new planes would take much longer.
Ganjar, meanwhile, urged Prabowo to make public the data on the country’s modernised military equipment. Prabowo, however, declined to do so and said that such data was confidential.
During the debate, the candidates also gave their take on how they would, if elected, address the longstanding disputes over the South China Sea.
Prabowo said that Indonesia needed to have better technology to defend its territory, while Anies felt that the country should become a dominant player in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) bloc in order to ensure a common position.
Ganjar proposed a review of Asean’s decision-making approach and said that a 2002 agreement between China and Asean’s member states to avoid maritime disputes had not succeeded.
“We can take the initiative through temporary agreements to avoid higher risks,” said Ganjar, without elaborating.
On foreign policy, Prabowo said that he would strive to maintain positive relationships with other countries in line with Indonesia’s “non-aligned” foreign policy. He stressed the importance of strengthening the domestic economy to raise the country’s international standing.
Analysts said that the swing voters would be crucial in determining the outcome of the election. These voters, who are predominantly Gen-Z and millennials, have taken to social media in recent weeks to ask why Prabowo has not been more transparent with providing data on military spending and procurement.
“It’s a bit disappointing that Prabowo, despite his position as defence minister, was not able to effectively establish himself as the utmost expert on the theme (of defence spending during Sunday’s debate),” said Fakhridho Susilo, a politics and law lecturer from President University.
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