Democracy is a young and treasured—but imperfect—institution in Indonesia. The country was governed by a U.S.-backed military dictatorship from 1966 to 1998, mostly under the notorious Gen. Suharto. Suharto’s ouster has been referred to as an “inside job” that created rules that guaranteed entrenched elites retained power. Among those rules is a requirement that a prospective presidential candidate’s party hold at least 20 percent of seats in parliament for the candidate to run—the highest such threshold in the world.

Elections to Watch in 2024: This story is part of a package on 15 key elections this year (besides the United States). Read the full analysis here. 

One of the large parties that has managed to thrive under these circumstances is the centrist Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP), led by Megawati Sukarnoputri, who served as the country’s first—and thus far only—female president from 2001 to 2004 and still leads the party today. The PDIP is also the party that facilitated the rise of incumbent President Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi.

Megawati took a chance on Jokowi in his 2014 presidential bid. Jokowi himself did not have an elite background—he grew up in a slum—but had a solid track record as the governor of the capital, Jakarta. In the intervening years, however, the two have grown apart, as Jokowi broke with party norms and began building up his own support base.

Today, Jokowi is one of the most well-liked leaders in the world, with approval ratings around 80 percent. A personality cult has built up around him, thanks in part to his political camp’s social media savvy. (Indonesia has the world’s second-largest TikTok audience.)

Under Jokowi’s leadership, Indonesia’s GDP has risen by 43 percent, and the country’s economy is among the fastest-growing globally. He has pushed for mass improvements in infrastructure—even announcing the construction of a new capital city to replace Jakarta, a project that is contentious—and has hosted summits of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as Indonesia seeks to carve out a space as a key nonaligned middle power amid intensifying competition between the United States and China. (Aside from Indonesia’s key geographic location on the Strait of Malacca, Beijing is also interested in its critical mineral reserves.)

Jokowi has also been an important figure for climate issues: In 2022, Indonesia inked a deal with Brazil and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to protect the world’s rainforests—which mostly fall in those three countries. Altogether, Indonesia is one of six “swing states” that “will decide the future of geopolitics,” the Eurasia Group’s Cliff Kupchan wrote in Foreign Policy in June 2023.

But Jokowi’s tenure hasn’t come without controversy. Human Rights Watch’s Brad Adams reported in 2020 that, under the incumbent president, “the human rights situation took a turn for the worse,” with freedoms of speech and assembly—as well as protections for minorities, such as the LGBTQ+ community—under attack. Jokowi has also weakened Indonesia’s democratic institutions. “Under his tenure, free elections have been threatened, civil liberties have declined, corruption fighters and legislative checks weakened, and the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs has grown,” Saiful Mujani and R. William Liddle wrote in the Journal of Democracy in October 2021.

Jokowi has served two terms and is constitutionally barred from seeking reelection. But that hasn’t stopped him from building up what journalist Joseph Rachman called a “dynasty” in Foreign Policy in November 2023. Indonesia’s top court annulled a 40-year age minimum to allow one of Jokowi’s sons, Gibran Rakabuming Raka—aged 36—to run as a vice presidential candidate alongside Jokowi’s defense minister, Prabowo Subianto. Prabowo, who previously lost the presidency to Jokowi, belongs to the right-wing Gerindra Party and was a military officer under Suharto.

Prabowo will face two other contenders for Indonesia’s presidency: Ganjar Pranowo, the PDIP’s pick, and independent Anies Baswedan. The three candidates’ platforms are relatively similar, with all vowing to continue Jokowi’s economic legacy and attempting to outdo one another with support for Palestine amid Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas. (Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country.)

Ganjar in particular is known for his campaign to exclude Israel from participating in the 2023 Under-20 FIFA World Cup. The tournament was meant to be hosted in Indonesia, but organizers moved it to Argentina amid their row with Ganjar, who until recently served as the governor of the state of Central Java. Indonesian soccer fans turned on Ganjar, but he earned support from hard-line Islamists and backers of the Palestinian cause. Anies, a former governor of Jakarta, has built his campaign on opposition to Jokowi’s new capital project.

It is Prabowo, with Gibran at his side, who has what is perhaps the best claim to what has been dubbed “Jokowinomics.” A Dec. 9, 2023, opinion poll by Indikator Politik Indonesia and cited by Reuters showed that Prabowo’s ticket is leading the field with 45.8 percent to Ganjar’s 25.6 percent. (Anies is trailing the field with lower numbers that were not reported.) If neither candidate wins a majority on Feb. 14—a likely prospect—they will head to a runoff in June.

Voters will also elect 575 new members of Indonesia’s House of Representatives via an open-list proportional system. Provinces and smaller local jurisdictions will hold contests, too. In total, Indonesians will choose almost 20,000 legislators on Feb. 14. It will be the first time a national Indonesian election is held during the rainy season, which could impact turnout and overall electoral expediency.

Jokowi has not endorsed any candidate but is assumed to be privately backing his son’s ticket. As Rachman put it: The incumbent, once an antidote to Indonesia’s entrenched elites, “is now resorting to the usual methods of the country’s oligarchy as he looks to remain a power player once he leaves office.”