I

t is almost final and Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo has won the presidential election fair and square according to the decision of the General Elections Commission (KPU). Prabowo Subianto'€™s claim of structured, systematic and massive fraud filed with the Constitutional Court constitutes the last effort of his camp to repudiate the result.

But a margin of 8.4 million votes between them should be considered a landslide and it is almost impossible to prove otherwise because most of Prabowo'€™s protests were delivered at the lower level processes, resolved and accepted by the witnesses then and there.

Support for Jokowi showed an initial decline at the beginning of the campaign period and during the two weeks before the election as observed by several reliable polls. However, it turned around one week before the election in an overwhelming way, from around minus 3 percent compared to Prabowo'€™s record to 6 percent plus on election day on July 9. How was that possible?

We have to look at why Jokowi'€™s popularity nosedived after the campaign started although he still had a lower double-digit advantage against Prabowo. In the first two weeks of campaigning he was left with a 3 percent plus only. There were many reasons for the downturn.

First was Jokowi'€™s disorganized election organization that only got stabilized and moving in the last two weeks of the campaign.

Second, the smear tactics targeting Jokowi initially worked and his camp could only neutralize them with enormous effort. It showed that Indonesians are very prone to rumors and in some cases lost their common sense.

Third, Prabowo was portrayed as a strong leader as juxtaposed to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono'€™s weakness. Toward the last week of the campaign, people came around as they realized that Prabowo would bring back authoritarianism with promises to return to the original 1945 Constitution with its absolute presidential authority; and the abolition of direct local and presidential elections. His economic policies were nationalistic with state dominance. However, revelations of Prabowo'€™s past human rights abuses came out, which were confirmed by his former colleagues and military seniors.

Jokowi, on the other hand, had shown his grasp of national politics, and the salient issues in economics, and in international affairs and defense. In all the five debates he convincingly came out the winner.

On top of everything else, he enjoyed the affection and trust of the common people as being one of them. He is also known for his resoluteness in fighting corruption during his tenure as the mayor of Surakarta and governor of Jakarta.

The uphill battle of the campaign took a turning point in the last week. The people practically seized the momentum to act on their own behalf to turn the situation around. First, the large groups of volunteers got themselves more focused and aggressive especially on social media and they overcame Prabowo'€™s social media team, which originally was more organized and advanced.

Second, other young volunteer groups organized themselves to watch the vote counts from the polling station (TPS) level to that of the subdistrict, district, regency and up to the provincial levels and at the national recapitulation process at the KPU. That was to prevent ballot rigging and vote-buying. At the national level quick counts were held on election day by credible pollsters to prevent cheating in the counting process.

Third, the most impressive event that galvanized support for Jokowi just one week before the election was the '€œSalam Dua Jari Concert'€ at Bung Karno Stadium in Central Jakarta, which no less than 100,000 people attended. Top musicians, artists and bands voluntarily organized the concert, a united effort that was unprecedented. It was a show of massive support by the people, especially the youth, for Jokowi and for their own future, which he represents.

For the first time in our political history, the people, especially the youth, participated in the election to the fullest. Hopefully, this sense of the importance of participating in the political process will continue in the future.

In my earlier column in The Jakarta Post, I wrote that the recent election was critical as a harbinger of Indonesia'€™s future and leadership. That has proven to be true. Jokowi now has a mandate to prepare Indonesia for a new era, a better one than the post-New Order or Reform era. Certainly, it is not an easy task as many critical problems such as poverty, unemployment, corruption, poor infrastructure and cumbersome bureaucracy have been left unattended to due to Yudhoyono'€™s lackluster leadership.

In addition, fundamental issues such as pluralism, protection of religious and ethnic minorities and religious freedom as laid down in our Constitution were not well taken care of.

Jokowi has Jusuf Kalla as his vice president, who has a lot of experience and achievements. Now both have to form a Cabinet composed of the best people, technocratically inclined as he promised and a few to be taken from the political parties in his coalition.

Members of the Cabinet should ideally be recruited from the best and the brightest of the younger generation who can follow Jokowi'€™s ideas and in tandem with his tempo. The core group of the economic team should have the same basic views and should be able to work closely as a team. Then there are the education and health portfolios that should be considered as the most basic ministries as the priorities of the government should be the people'€™s interests, and these two fields are the most critical in uplifting the people'€™s future.

There are two months left to form the Cabinet and it has to go through a vigorous process of selection. Expectations are high, so is Jokowi'€™s popularity and the people'€™s trust. I am sure he will do his utmost to fulfill our expectations.