Jakarta: Indonesian President Joko Widodo has won a second five-year term, preliminary election results showed Wednesday, in a victory for moderation over the nationalistic rhetoric of his rival, Prabowo Subianto.
Vote counts from five independent survey groups showed Widodo with a clear lead over Subianto, a general during the era of the Suharto military dictatorship who warned Indonesia would fall apart without his strongman leadership. The so-called “quick counts” from reputable survey organisations that use a sample of polling stations have been reliable in past elections.
With an average of 80% of sample polling stations counted, the five survey organisations showed Widodo winning 54-56% of the vote, a modest improvement on his 2014 showing. Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, is an outpost of democracy in a Southeast Asian neighbourhood of authoritarian governments and is forecast to be among the world’s biggest economies by 2030.
