A former military general with a murky past has become a frontrunner in Indonesia’s upcoming elections after a radical makeover to portray him as a cat-loving “cuddly grandpa”.

The vast south-east Asian archipelago goes to the polls on Wednesday, 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 also deployed huge screens with anime avatars of Prabowo smiling and winking at passers-by.

Fiery, pious nationalist

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 the late dictator, Suharto, 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 persecuted, 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, a director 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.”

The defence minister has run for president two times already in an attempt to unseat the wildly popular current leader Joko Widodo – better known as Jokowi.

President’s approval

Although Jokowi retains approval ratings as high as 80 per cent, Indonesia’s presidential post has a two-term limit.

But Prabowo appears to have made some sort of deal with Jokowi in exchange for his support, providing a vital boost to his campaign.

He appointed Jokowi’s eldest son Gibran Rakabuming as his vice-presidential running mate after a controversial court ruling by the president’s brother-in-law enabled the 36 year-old to bypass rules stating candidates must be at least 40.

Polls are now projecting that he will win more than 50 per cent of Wednesday’s vote, which would allow him to avoid a run-off election in June with the runner-up candidate. He is up against Anies Baswedan, the former governor of Jakarta, and Ganjar Pranowo, the former governor of Central Java.

Jokowi’s move is “simply because [he] wants his son to win the vice presidential position”, giving him influence behind the scenes, Andreas Harsono, Indonesia researcher for Human Rights Watch, told The Telegraph.

The “Jokowi effect” has proved fruitful for an ambitious Prabowo.

“That single consequential manoeuvre has paid off handsomely in the polls for the last three months in boosting Prabowo’s support,” Kennedy Muslim, an analyst from polling institute Indikator Politik, told Reuters.