Polling stations opened in the country early Wednesday following a six-month campaign to choose a new president and parliament
People queue up at a polling booth to vote during elections in Bogor, West Java, Indonesia, on April 17, 2019.Indonesians began voting in the world’s biggest single-day election on Wednesday as polling stations opened across the sprawling equatorial archipelago following a six-month campaign to choose a new president and parliament.
Most opinion polls give Widodo a double-digit lead, but the opposition says the race is much closer and Prabowo told a news conference late on Tuesday that he expected to win with 63 per cent of the vote. A tornado in East Java late on Tuesday destroyed two village polling stations and cut power to two others, forcing the authorities to move voting to safer areas, the domestic news agency Antara reported.
The country’s election supervisory board has recommended a re-vote for Indonesians in Malaysia and in Australia, where several hundred registered voters were still standing in line after the polls closed there on Saturday. A decision will be taken by the elections commission. “Should Prabowo win, this would literally be the end of opinion polling in Indonesia ... and a major, major upset,” said Marcus Mietzner, associate professor at Australian National University. “The question is what the margin of victory will be,” he said, predicting Widodo’s re-election.
Widodo touted his record on deregulation and improving infrastructure, calling it a first step to tackling inequality and poverty in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy.
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