The former general appears to have won the election, after rebranding himself as a cuddly character
is a cute grandpa who loves his cat, Bobby, and dances terribly. This cuddly online persona helps him hoover up millions of likes. Now it has earned him tens of millions of votes. His rivals have urged Indonesians to wait for official results, but the outcome may be inescapable. Mr Prabowo has claimed victory in, held on February 14th. An unofficial quick count by four Indonesian pollsters reckons he won 58%of the vote, comfortably exceeding the 50% threshold required to avoid a runoff.
Marrying the daughter of Suharto, Indonesia’s late dictator, in 1983 helped him build on his wealth and connections. Yet Mr Prabowo allegedly committed atrocities in Indonesia’s former territory of East Timor . He is also accused of ordering the kidnapping in 1998 of more than 20 democracy activists, of whom 13 remain missing. Mr Prabowo came with his troops to Indonesia’s capital when protests threatened Suharto’s regime, but the dictatorship still fell.
Mr Prabowo also embraced “Jokowinomics”—infrastructure-led development and an industrial policy based on Indonesia’s huge nickel reserves—and made the president’s son his running-mate. Jokowi hopes to maintain influence through Mr Prabowo, who rode the departing president’s popularity to victory. But given the presumptive president-elect’s erratic past behaviour, it seems unlikely that he will defer to Jokowi.