In the age of TikTok, young people are decisive in Indonesian elections

Young people will be decisive in the February 14 elections in Indonesia, where the campaign has been marked by the leadership of the controversial former general Prabowo Subianto and an extensive use of TikTok and other social networks.

The vote of voters between 17 and 40 years old, who represent 52% of the 205 million people called to the polls in Indonesia, the third most populous democracy and the country with the largest number of Muslims in the world, will be decisive in elections that elect the president, vice president, the Legislature and thousands of local positions.

Prabowo, now Minister of Defense and who is on track to achieve an absolute majority after losing the last two elections to President Joko Widodo, according to a recent survey, has therefore put the young population at the center of his strategy.

Accused of human rights violations during his time as head of the elite military corps (1995-1998) in East Timor, Papua and against activists in the last years of the Suharto dictatorship (1967-1998), the septuagenarian has improved her image due in part to dances that have gone viral on TikTok.

Thanks to a studied campaign, many young people consider the former general a grandfather “gemoy”, which can be translated as grandfather “endearing.”

Mada Sukmajati, professor of Politics and Government at the Indonesian Gadjah Mada University, pointed out that many young Indonesians are also unaware of Prabowo’s controversial career or simply think it is something of the past.

“They assume that the issue of past human rights violations is something of previous generations”Sukmajati said in an email.

Alliance with the Widodo “dynasty”

Aside from his questionable human rights record, Prabowo’s alliance with Widodo’s son, Gibran Rakabuming, his “number two” and aspiring vice president, has created dissent: while he has raised his profile for some, he has been criticized by others for being able to create a political dynasty.

This Monday, various groups of young people organized different protests in the country against this union.

“At first, I supported Prabowo because of his relative success at the head of the Ministry of Defense. “Everything changed when he supported Gibran as a candidate for vice president and the whole matter of the Constitutional Court.”said Berwyn, an 18-year-old college student.

Berwyn, who claims to have spent a lot of time talking about the elections on internet forums, is referring to the controversial decision of the Constitutional Court last October to lower the minimum age for candidates for president and vice president from 40 to 35 years old with the condition that they have political experience.

A change that benefited Gibran, who is 36 years old and was elected mayor of Surakarta (Solo) in 2020.

“I am part of the first generation of Indonesians who experienced a new level of freedom under the reform era. And I don’t want it to be taken away from me by the same privileged people as always,” said Berwyn, which is why he decided to vote for another presidential candidate, Anies Baswedan, former governor of Jakarta (2017-2022).

The third in the running is Ganjar Pranowo, from the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle.

The “ghost” of the dictator

While some young people like Berwyn fear that the alliance between Prabowo – Suharto’s son-in-law – and Gibran will mean a return to the late dictator’s New Order regime, others take it more as a joke that his “ghost” is planning for the elections.

Thus, an ultra-fake video of the late Indonesian leader in which he advocates for Golkar, the political movement that supported him and is now part of the coalition that supports Prabowo, has accumulated more than 4.7 million views on the social network users reacting positively.

Rian Ernest, 36, who is running as a Golkar candidate, defends that he is doing so for practical reasons.

“Politics affects our daily lives. The price of the coffee we buy, the cost of the electricity bill, are derived from politics. So, as young people, we must be critical and monitor it.”