It takes a special politician to draw a crowd of 100,000. This one has a chequered past

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It is still hours until the main event and some 100,000 chanting Indonesians, undaunted by Jakarta’s smothering humidity, have filled Gelora Bung Karno Stadium to capacity and beyond, flag-waving and fist-pumping in anticipatory rapture from each seat, aisle and vaguely accessible crevice.

They have come to see Prabowo Subianto, the former general who is expected to become Indonesia’s next president, deliver his final stadium-rattling address before Wednesday’s national elections.

Presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto delivers his speech during his campaign rally at Gelora Bung Karno Main Stadium in Jakarta.Credit: AP

People have fainted. Ambulances blare through the partying crowds locked out outside. Mercifully, the star decides to bring the show forward, arriving onto a stage painted with a giant number two, his place on the ballot alongside running mate Gibran Rakabuming Raka, the 36-year-old son of outgoing president Joko Widodo.

“Let’s not become a dwarf nation,” Prabowo growls in Indonesian through a stadium sound system turned up to ten. “Don’t let us continuously be pitted against each other by foreign nations. Don’t let us continuously be lied to. We must become a big nation, a prosperous nation.”

The Americans saw his presidency coming almost 40 years ago. Then a captain in the military, he exemplified “the type of officer who could rise to national leadership,” CIA authors wrote in a now-declassified intelligence assessment.

“He is a Javanese Muslim military officer with combat experience in Timor and has a good reputation for leadership. Furthermore, he comes from an old and respected family.

“His marriage to one of President Suharto’s daughters in 1983 further advanced his career along an already promising path. We believe that President Suharto may eventually look to his son-in-law to succeed him both as national leader and as guardian of the Suharto family fortunes.”

Unfortunately for Prabowo, his path to the palace has been far more tortuous.

Joko, commonly known as Jokowi, beat him in both the 2014 and 2019 elections, the nation’s most recent. Before that, he lost as the vice-presidential candidate for political matriarch Megawati Sukarnoputri, and in 2004 failed to secure the presidential nomination from the party of former authoritarian Suharto.

Prabowo Subianto (right-centre) greets supporters with Gibran Rakabuming Raka, his vice-presidential candidate and the son of President Joko Widodo.Credit: Bloomberg

This time, bellowing into the microphones at the sunny GBK Stadium, sweat dripping from his face and his blue-shirt darkening, Prabowo, now 72, can finally taste victory.

Polls have him favourite to beat former Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan and former Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowo. Some also have the Prabowo/Gibran ticket scoring the necessary majority (50 per cent plus one) to avoid a June run-off.

“Merdeka! Merdaka! Merdeka!,” he yells, fist-raised to the exultant crowd. The word’s local roots date to the 1940s fight against Dutch colonial rule. It is also a modern incantation for freedom from any manner of ills.

To close his performance, Prabowo steps from behind the podium with a hand-held microphone to lead the audience in a rendition of the old independence song Maju Tak Gentar.

“Fear not, fear not / Attack, Attack / Go forward, go forward and win.”

It is one of the truly awful singing voices in politics or otherwise, but the stadium loves it. It is part of the appeal: confident, unbending, endearingly daggy. Water cannons spray the crowd to keep them cool. Women weep trying to touch his outstretched hand.

A supporter who passed out due to the heat is helped to safety as Prabowo Subianto speaks.Credit: AP

“I like his personality, it looks that he is sincere especially after the last election when Pak [Mr or Sir] Jokowi won, he was willing to be his minister,” says Alwi Hanafiah after this weekend’s rally.

The 32-year-old driver borrowed his boss’s car and set out for the show at 3am from Purwakarta, about 100 kilometres southeast of Jakarta. Alwi voted for Jokowi in 2014 and 2019, and is backing Prabowo this time, in large part because he wants to see the continuation of current policies.

“[My favourite part] was when during his speech, he extended many thanks to all previous presidents. I find that very good, especially when he thanked Ibu [Mrs] Megawati Sukarnoputri. In fact, all this time, Ibu Mega made statements that attacked Pak Prabowo, but, humbly, he thanked her. I was so touched. I was proud of him.”

Prabowo Subianto was born in Jakarta in 1951, the princeling of an elite Indonesian family with ancestral ties to Javanese sultans. His father, Sumitro, fell foul of the nation’s founding president Sukarno and moved them variously between Kuala Lumpur, London, Singapore, Hong Kong and Zurich for about a decade.

Prabowo, now said to be fluent in English, French, German and Dutch, returned to Indonesia with his family at the beginning of the Suharto years in the late 1960s.

His brother, Hashim, is ridiculously wealthy with interests including palm oil and energy. Prabowo, meanwhile, went down the military path, receiving training at Fort Bragg in the United States as one its star pupils, and rising through the Indonesian ranks to become a top general and commander of the elite special forces squad, Kopassus.

Lieutenant-General Prabowo Subianto in 1998 amid the political kidnapping storm.Credit: Reuters

His career, however, was marked by accusations, often unsubstantiated, of hardman tactics ranging from secret coup-plotting against his father-in-law, Suharto, to fomenting deadly anti-Chinese riots.

In 1996, he led the rescue of western and local hostages in West Papua. The helicopter used in the mission was alleged to bear the insignia of the Red Cross, giving villagers a false sense of comfort and drawing some into the open. People were killed. All but two of the hostages were freed.

“I should be given a knighthood by your government,” he told Financial Times Journalist Ben Bland in a rare 2013 interview with the foreign press. “I saved your citizens, I put my own life at risk and my soldiers were killed.”

Suharto’s 32-year authoritarian regime collapsed in 1998 under the weight of the Reformasi [reform] movement and the Asian financial crisis.

The same year, Prabowo was dismissed by a military tribunal for his role in the abduction of democracy activists, twelve of whom remain missing. He maintains he has no knowledge of their fate.

Cast into ignominy amid a fledgling Indonesian democracy, he went to live in Jordan. Prabowo and his wife Siti Hediati Hariyadi separated in 2001.

It was a low ebb. The previous year, the United States under president Bill Clinton determined the accusations of Prabowo’s human rights violations disqualified him from entering the country. The ban was upheld through the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and only lifted in 2019 when it became too awkward to do otherwise. By then, Jokowi, who is now backing his former rival for the top job, had installed Prabowo as defence minister.

Prabowo Subianto draws a crowd.Credit: AP

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age reported in 2014 Australia, too, had Probowo marked on a visa blacklist until it appeared to the government there was a chance he would beat Jokowi in the 2014 election. The Home Affairs Department on Sunday would not comment, citing privacy.

“I think the past stays in the past,” says 17-year-old Jakarta student and first-time voter Nadira. “I think everybody at some point has an intention to reform [themselves]. And now he is different.”

Alwi, the driver from Purwakarta, complains that “the human rights accusation only appear every five years”.

“If it is proven that Pak [Mr] Prabowo violated human rights, why did Ibu [Mrs] Megawati take him as her VP candidate [in 2009]? And if Pak Prabowo did violate human rights, Pak Jokowi should have investigated and should have put him behind bars. So, it’s only an accusation, in my opinion.”

At least one of the generals who dismissed Prabowo from the military in 1998 attended Saturday’s rally. So too did his former wife, who is a staunch supporter despite their separation, and the pair’s only son, Didit Hediprasetyo, a prominent international fashion designer.

The 2024 presidential campaign has been broadly lacking serious reform commitments, Indonesia watchers say. Given Jokowi’s popularity, setting a new course for Indonesia would be electorally unwise.

The selection of Gibran as his running mate has served as a key symbol of Jokowi support and policy continuity. But which persona would emerge in the palace remains unclear. The hardman nationalist of 2014? The impassioned Islamist of 2019? Or the statesman and “gemoy” [adorable] dancing grandfather of 2024?

“Who would dare to control him?” Greg Fealy, a veteran Indonesia analyst at the Australian National University, says of the presidential hopeful’s renowned combustible temper.

At recent international forums, Prabowo has spoken of the threats of climate change and food security, and espouses an “Asian way” of diplomacy – peace through negotiation and co-operation, but essentially each to their own. In this vein, he “respects” AUKUS and Australia’s four-way partnership with India, Japan and the United States known as the Quad.

“He has said ‘1000 friends too few, and one enemy too many’,” campaign spokesman, Budisantro Djiwandono, told this masthead before Saturday’s rally.

“The strong foundations he has built with [foreign leaders] over these past years is a testament to that. But, of course, it’s also a key message that we need to address the needs of the Indonesian people first.”

The world awaits.

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