‘Cuddly’ former army chief with dark past leads Indonesia poll
A FORMER military general linked with human rights abuses is a front runner in Indonesia’s upcoming elections after a makeover to portray him as a cat-loving “cuddly grandpa”.
The vast south-east Asian archipelago goes to the polls tomorrow, marking the world’s largest single-day election. Roughly 205 million people are registered to vote across more than 7,000 inhabited islands.
Leading the polls is Prabowo Subianto, the 72-year-old defence minister who has been heavily promoted as “gemoy” – adorable or cuddly – after a political campaign focused more on personality than policy. Photos of his cat, clips of his dodgy dance moves and baby-faced cartoon versions of the politician have gone viral on social media in a country where around half of the population is under 30.
His team have deployed huge screens with anime avatars of Mr Prabowo smiling and winking at passers-by. This has transformed his reputation from a fiery, pious nationalist and charmed a young electorate with little memory of the oppressive dictatorship of which he was once part.
“Prabowo is my online grandpa,” wrote one female Tiktok user, in a short selfie video with cartoons of the former general.
Once the son-in-law to Suharto, the late dictator, Mr Prabowo has a chequered human rights record.
Among many allegations against him – which he denies – are claims his military unit committed human rights abuses in Papua and East Timor, and that he was involved in the abduction and disappearance of student activists in late 1990s. He has never been prosecuted, but was discharged from the military, exiled in Jordan, and at one point barred from the US and Australia.
“Prabowo is not cute,” Prof Tim Lindsey, of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society at the University of Melbourne, wrote in The Conversation, not-for-profit media website. “If [he] does become president, as many now expect, Indonesia’s fragile democratic system may be the next thing he reinvents – or, more likely, dismantles.”