Frontrunner Prabowo Subianto of Gerindra Party kicked off his presidential campaign over the weekend in his stronghold of West Java, days after his two rivals hit the road on the first official day of the campaign season to secure their spots in the run-off.

The defense minister began on Saturday in Tasikmalaya, a city in West Java known as “kota santri”, or city of Islamic boarding school students. In a rally there, his supporters chanted “West Java still belongs to Prabowo”.

West Java has traditionally been a reliable source of votes for Prabowo, who secured 59 percent of the vote there in two previous elections against then-rival President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. But recently, the country’s most populous province has seen a growing bloc of electorate shifting to rival Anies Baswedan, who is widely seen as an opposition candidate.

Prabowo is making his third run for the presidency, with Jokowi’s eldest son Gibran Rakabuming Raka as his running mate against former Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowo and running mate Mahfud MD and the Anies-Muhaimin Iskandar pair.

At the rally in Tasikmalaya, Prabowo thanked his supporters for their unwavering support and apologized for not coming back to the city after his bruising defeat in the 2019 election, saying that he “fell at the time, but now is ready to rise”.

Prabowo pledged to develop various industries and the workforce, and to end poverty. “There should be no children who have difficulty drinking milk. There should be no young people who have difficulty finding work,” he said.

Read also: Presidential campaign kicks off

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