Indonesia elections: World’s biggest single-day poll

Team Udayavani, Apr 15, 2019, 9:49 AM IST

Jakarta: Dipping their fingers in halal ink to prevent double voting, Indonesians cast their ballots on Wednesday in a bitterly contested presidential election, with the main rival to incumbent Joko Widodo already threatening to challenge the result over voter-fraud claims.

The Muslim-majority nation’s biggest-ever polls with more than 190 million voters and 245,000 candidates vying for the presidency, parliament and local positions is largely a referendum on Widodo’s infrastructure-driven bid to rev up Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

But, looming in the background, two decades of democratic gains are at risk of being eroded, analysts said, as the military creeps back into civilian life under Widodo, and his trailing rival Prabowo Subianto, a former general, eyes reforms that harken back to the Suharto dictatorship.

If he loses, Subianto’s camp has already warned it will challenge the results over voter-list irregularities.

“It’s high stakes in this election,” said Evan Laksmana, a senior researcher at the Jakarta-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

“We simply don’t know what (Subianto) would do if he won and we don’t know if the institutional constraints in place would contain him.”

Voting starts at 7:00 am local time Wednesday (2200 GMT Tuesday) in easternmost Papua and ends at 1:00 pm at the other end of the country in Sumatra.

Ballots will be cast at more than 800,000 polling booths across the volcano-dotted country, from the tip of jungle-clad Sumatra and heavily populated Java island to beach paradise Bali and far-flung Sumbawa.

Voters will punch holes in ballots to make clear their candidate choice — and then dip a finger in Muslim-approved halal ink, a measure to prevent double-voting in a graft-riddled country where ballot buying is rife.

A series of so-called “quick counts” are expected to give a reliable indication of the presidential winner later Wednesday. Official results are not expected until May.

Most polls show the 57-year-old Widodo holding a double-digit lead over Subianto, 67, setting up a repeat of their 2014 contest, which Widodo won despite an unsuccessful court challenge over his narrow victory.

The race has been punctuated by bitter mudslinging between the two camps, religion-driven identity politics and a slew of fake news online that threatens to sway millions of undecided voters.