Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Indonesia’s upcoming election, cease-fire talks for the Israel-Hamas war, and Russia’s criminal charges against Estonia’s prime minister.
Who Will Succeed Jokowi?
Indonesia will hold presidential and parliamentary elections on Wednesday in the world’s largest single-day democratic vote. Six million election officials will oversee more than 205 million eligible voters across thousands of islands. Around 10,000 candidates from 18 political parties are competing for a spot in the country’s 580-seat parliament. And for the first time in 15 years, three presidential candidates are running for the nation’s highest office.
Leading in the polls is Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto of the Gerindra Party. A onetime rival of outgoing President Joko Widodo (known as Jokowi), Prabowo now touts himself as the continuity candidate. Jokowi appears to be backing Prabowo over his own party’s choice, former Central Java Gov. Ganjar Pranowo, in a move that critics and many analysts see as part of an ongoing effort to extend Jokowi’s influence past the election. The president’s eldest son is Prabowo’s running mate.
Prabowo is best known for being the son-in-law of former Indonesian military dictator Suharto, who was toppled in 1998. Under Suharto’s regime, Prabowo served as a lieutenant general, and he has been accused of committing atrocities during his time in the army, including his role in the U.S.-backed invasion of East Timor and ordering the abduction of more than 20 pro-democracy student activists in 1998—13 of whom have never been found. (Prabowo denies any wrongdoing.) But his highly popular social media campaign, awkward dance performances, and apparent support from Jokowi have tried to reframe the candidate as a “cuddly grandpa.” However, experts and human rights activists have raised concerns that Prabowo, who has previously said the country needs an authoritarian leader, would continue to weaken the country’s democratic institutions, as Jokowi has done.
Ganjar, meanwhile, is only polling at 20 percent despite being the top choice of the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle. He has been described as “Jokowi lite” and has pledged to continue most of Jokowi’s policies, though with some changes, as well as keep up the country’s annual 5 percent GDP growth rate. “We want to develop Indonesia faster and continue the good things that have been done by the current government, to fix what is not good enough and to leave the bad ones,” Ganjar said. Indonesia is the sixth-biggest emerging market in the world.
Unaffiliated candidate Anies Baswedan was the head of an Islamic university before serving as governor of Jakarta until late 2022, during which time he improved the city’s public transportation and oversaw the capital’s COVID-19 response. He has repeatedly criticized Jokowi’s efforts to move the country’s capital from Jakarta to another island, saying it will not reap economic rewards, and has condemned what he describes as the return of nepotism.
All three candidates have worked hard to court young voters under age 40, who make up Indonesia’s largest voting bloc.
This is only Indonesia’s fifth democratic election since Suharto’s fall. “Democracy is a young and treasured—but imperfect—institution in Indonesia,” FP’s Allison Meakem writes. As the world’s third-largest democracy, a key Indo-Pacific player, a major nickel producer, and the home to the largest Muslim population globally, Indonesia is positioned to become one of the world’s most influential decision-makers.
If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote on Wednesday, the top two politicians will compete in a runoff on June 26.
Today’s Most Read
- The Neurotic Fixations of U.S. Foreign Policy by Stephen M. Walt
- The Country With Nothing Left to Lose by Christina Lu
- 5 Rules for Superpowers Facing Multiple Conflicts by Jakub Grygiel and A. Wess Mitchell
What We’re Following
Renewed negotiations. Senior intelligence officials from Egypt, Israel, Qatar, and the United States met in Cairo on Tuesday to discuss a potential cease-fire in Gaza. U.S. President Joe Biden said on Monday that his administration is working on creating a six-week truce that would eventually establish a permanent end to the war, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains opposed to any deal that limits Israel’s ability to completely destroy Hamas. Hamas leaders said they do not trust Israel to abide by a cease-fire once all hostages are released.
Israel’s expected ground offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah remains a backdrop to ongoing talks in Cairo. The international community has repeatedly warned Israel not to launch an assault on the city, citing humanitarian concerns. More than half of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million residents have evacuated to Rafah since the war began on Oct. 7, 2023, to flee Israeli attacks. Netanyahu has been criticized for not providing a plan to protect the civilians who would be endangered in his Rafah operation.
“Scare tactic.” Russian authorities placed Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and other European officials on a “wanted” list for “desecration of historical memory,” Russian officials confirmed on Tuesday. Kallas’s government has worked to remove as many as 400 Soviet-era World War II monuments from across Estonia to prevent the mobilization of “more hostility” in the country, arguing that Russia wanted to use the memorials “to fuel tensions in Estonian society.” This is the first time that the Kremlin’s interior ministry has brought a criminal case against a foreign leader.
Kallas dismissed the Kremlin’s warning on Tuesday as a “familiar scare tactic” and said she would continue to support Ukraine in its war against Russia. Since coming to office in 2021, Kallas has advocated for boosting Europe’s defenses and strengthening NATO. Also on Tuesday, Estonia’s foreign intelligence service warned that Moscow planned to double its number of troops stationed on its borders with the Baltic states and Finland to prepare for a potential military conflict with NATO in the next 10 years.
India’s farmers protest again. Police fired tear gas at farmers in India on Tuesday as tens of thousands of them marched to New Delhi to protest broken agricultural promises made by the government. The farmers are demanding guaranteed crop prices and for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration to double their incomes. Barricades prevented demonstrators from entering the capital.
Previous farmers’ protests rocked the country beginning in November 2020. At that time, thousands of people camped outside of New Delhi for more than a year to protest Modi repealing a set of agricultural laws that had protected farmers’ incomes. Tuesday’s marchers argued that Modi failed to uphold promises that he made in 2021 to quell the protests.
Odds and Ends
Kitty cuddles usually bring endorphins, but sometimes, they can carry something a little more sinister. One cat owner in Oregon learned this the hard way last week when the resident’s furry companion likely gave them the bubonic plague, according to health officials. What once killed millions of people during Europe’s Black Death is now an incredibly rare and treatable disease when caught early. Local authorities said no additional nearby cases have been reported.