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25 J. Democracy 111 (2014)
How Jokowi Won and Democracy Survived

handle is hein.journals/jnlodmcy25 and id is 673 raw text is: Indonesia's 2014 Elections HOW JOKOWI WON AND DEMOCRACY SURVIVED Marcus Mietzner Marcus Mietzner is associate professor in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. His most recent book is Money, Power, and Ideology: Political Parties in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia (2013). In the discussion about democracy's global recession, analysts tend to fo- cus on the most dramatic cases of democratic reversal, such as the military coups in Egypt and Thailand. In their shadow, however, Indonesia (the world's third-largest democracy) has faced a less discussed, but equally serious, threat to its democratic polity. Ironically, this threat came in the form of the country's third direct presidential election since the fall of longtime autocrat Suharto in 1998. Held on 9 July 2014, this contest fea- tured a formidable populist challenge from Prabowo Subianto, Suharto's former son-in-law. Promising tougher leadership and a return to the in- direct electoral mechanisms with which Suharto ruled Indonesia for 32 years, Prabowo came within a hair's breadth of winning the presidency. Had he been successful, the consequences would have been momentous: Not only would Indonesia have been put on the path of authoritarian re- vival, but the potential loss of a much-praised majority-Muslim democ- racy would have further deepened the global democratic recession. Ultimately, Prabowo lost to Joko Widodo (popularly called Jokowi), the governor of the capital Jakarta, by a margin of 53.1 to 46.9 percent. Even after his defeat was evident, Prabowo continued his challenge by publishing obviously manipulated quick counts that showed him win- ning, and by trying to intervene in the official vote tabulation on the ground. Despite these maneuvers, the General Election Commission de- clared Jokowi the winner on July 22, paving the way for his inauguration in October. Nevertheless, the election revealed the continued vulnerabil- ity of Indonesia's young democracy and highlighted the strength of the country's antidemocratic forces-within both the elite and the general electorate. Prabowo's ability to attract almost half the population with a Journal of Democracy Volume 25, Number 4 October 2014 © 2014 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press

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