The New York Times





JAKARTA, Indonesia — Joko Widodo, the governor of Jakarta whose common touch has made him an unlikely political phenomenon, was declared the winner of Indonesia’s presidential election on Tuesday, completing an improbable ascent from slum child to leader of the world’s fourth most populous nation.

But the historic day was not without controversy as his opponent, Prabowo Subianto, a retired Army general, denounced the result and threatened to withdraw from the race.

The General Elections Commission announced that Mr. Joko had beaten his opponent, Mr. Prabowo, 53.15 percent to 46.85 percent. Nearly 135 million Indonesians cast ballots in the emotionally charged July 9 election, in which voters were choosing a new president for the first time in 10 years.

There was massive police security at the commission’s offices in the Indonesian capital on Tuesday as the vote tabulations were completed, amid rumors of violent street demonstrations by disappointed supporters of Mr. Prabowo.

As the elections commission was finishing tabulations in the early afternoon and preparing to announce Mr. Joko the winner, representatives of Mr. Prabowo’s campaign staged a walkout at the commission’s office in central Jakarta. Shortly afterward, Mr. Prabowo read an impassioned statement to supporters at his campaign headquarters saying that he had withdrawn his candidacy and would reject the results.



“There has been a massive, structured and systematic fraud,” Mr. Prabowo said.

On Tuesday night, his brother and chief adviser, Hashim Djojohadikusumo, said Mr. Prabowo had not withdrawn his candidacy, but that they were demanding additional time for the elections commission to investigate “serious problems” in both ballot casting and vote tabulations.

Elections commission officials, however, rejected his campaign’s allegations.

“Why are they in such a hurry” to declare Mr. Joko the winner, Mr. Hashim said, adding that they had not yet decided when they might appeal the election result to the Indonesian Constitutional Court.

“We want the K.P.U. to take a serious look at these irregularities,” Mr. Hashim said, referring to the elections commission.

The Constitutional Court has the sole authority to order recounts or new voting at the provincial level and below, and its decisions are binding. The court would have two weeks to issue any decision should there be an appeal. But analysts said it was highly unlikely that any ruling would overturn the final national result, given the margin of Mr. Joko’s victory.

The announcement Tuesday was not a surprise. Hours after the polls closed July 9, the results of so-called quick counts conducted by well-established polling firms showed Mr. Joko with a lead of from four to six percentage points. Mr. Prabowo, however, pointed to other firms, trusted by his campaign but dismissed as unreliable by a number of independent analysts, that put him ahead.

What amounted to declarations of victory by both camps caused a period of uncertainty as the commission tabulated votes from more than 480,000 polling stations across the sprawling Indonesian archipelago. Mr. Prabowo’s campaign said over the weekend that there had been widespread irregularities in the tabulations and had called for Tuesday’s announcement to be delayed.

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Mr. Joko is to be sworn in Oct. 20. He has pledged to bring “more people-centric” governance and policies to Indonesia, which despite being a member of the G-20 group of major economies has more than 100 million people living on $2 a day or less.

The victory culminates an improbable rise for Mr. Joko, 53, who was born and raised in a riverside slum area in the city of Surakarta, also known as Solo, in Central Java. He grew up to be a carpenter and later a furniture exporter before entering politics in 2005, where he was twice elected mayor of his hometown, then governor of Jakarta in 2012.

Mr. Joko, a thin, unassuming figure with what he has described as a typical “village face,” will be Indonesia’s seventh president and the first not to have emerged from the country’s political elite or to have been an army general.

Mr. Prabowo, 62, was a son-in-law of Suharto, the authoritarian president who was forced to resign in 1998 after 32 years in power amid pro-democracy street demonstrations. Mr. Prabowo, a successful businessman who comes from a prominent Javanese political family, has a checkered military record, including widespread allegations of human rights abuses as commander of Indonesia’s Special Forces and later as head of the army’s strategic reserve command. He was denied a visa to enter the United States in 2000 and is believed to remain on an unofficial blacklist.

The contest between Mr. Joko and Mr. Prabowo was characterized by some as both a choice between an untainted reformer and a figure from the authoritarian past, and a race between Indonesia’s rich and poor.

“Jokowi is not a famous person’s son — he’s a commoner,” said Salim Said, a prominent Indonesian political analyst and former diplomat, referring to Mr. Joko by his popular nickname.

“Indonesia is a country that previously didn’t have a democratic tradition, so we could not differentiate between a president and a king,” Mr. Salim said. “Now, we see the president like they do in America with Barack Obama: someone who is our neighbor, who decided to get into politics and run for president.”

Mr. Joko took Indonesia’s political scene by storm after winning the Jakarta governorship as a dark-horse opposition candidate less than two years ago. He quickly gained a national following, thanks in large part to favorable news coverage of his daily walks through slums, markets and lower-class neighborhoods to talk to people about issues like health care, education and flood control.

He is known for a “people first” credo and for a humble manner — his trademark wardrobe comprises simple button-down shirts and inexpensive slacks — that is a striking departure from the aloof style of most Indonesian politicians.

Sitting barefoot in a chair inside a small rented house in central Jakarta a few days before Tuesday’s announcement, Mr. Joko said in an interview that Indonesia’s continuing democratic transition had broken the grip of the entrenched political elite on the government.

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Of crucial importance to this, he said, was the introduction of direct elections from president all the way down to town mayor a decade ago, as part of a national decentralization policy that replaced Suharto’s centralized system of governance.

Mr. Joko said he could never have dreamed of growing up to become president in the 1960s and 1970s under the Suharto regime, when elections were rigged and political activities closely controlled.

“No, no, there was no dream,” Mr. Joko said. “But now, it’s quite similar to America, yeah? There is the American dream, and here we have the Indonesian dream.”

Mr. Joko will lead a country that has successfully consolidated its democracy and enjoyed strong economic growth under the departing president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has served two five-year terms and is constitutionally barred from seeking a third. Indonesia has had one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia in recent years, along with China and India.

But that same economy, which achieved annual growth rates of more than 6 percent from 2010 to 2012, mostly thanks to its abundant natural resources and robust domestic consumption, is facing several serious challenges.

They include a current-account deficit, a national fuel subsidy that sucks tens of billions of dollars each year from the state budget, inadequate infrastructure, corruption, poverty and a growing disparity between the country’s rich and poor.

Mr. Joko said that corruption and “the gap between the haves and have-nots” were Indonesia’s two most pressing domestic problems.

Indonesia, one of the most corrupt countries in Asia, according to Transparency International, in 2002 embarked on an antigraft movement by creating the independent Corruption Eradication Commission.

Mr. Yudhoyono made fighting corruption a pillar of his election campaigns in 2004 and 2009, but while the commission has prosecuted hundreds of public officials, Mr. Yudhoyono’s second term was mired in graft scandals within his own governing Democratic Party.

During the interview, Mr. Joko promised additional funding for the anticorruption agency, which has faced budget cuts in Parliament after jailing sitting and former lawmakers for graft. He also said he would establish online systems for national government budgeting, purchasing, audits and tax collection, as he did while governor of Jakarta.

During the bruising presidential campaign, Mr. Prabowo, 62, characterized Mr. Joko as an unsophisticated, small-town politician who lacked the ability to lead a large nation. But Mr. Joko himself noted that he would be the only president in Indonesian history to take office with prior experience in running a government.

“In a city, you have a chief of public works, an education department,” he said. “In a country, you have a minister of education, and a public works minister. What’s the difference? Only the scale.

“It’s about management. How to plan, how to organize, how to decide actions. In my opinion, the most important thing in governance is management control.”

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