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Prabowo shifts into higher gear as odds grow for runoff
While Prabowo ramps up his campaign with an eight-province whistle-stop tour across Sumatra, indications are growing of a possible Anies-Ganjar front as surveys suggest a likely second round for the presidential election.
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Motorists drive past the flags of various political parties along a street in Jakarta on Jan. 12, almost exactly a month ahead of the 2024 general election. (Reuters/Willy Kurniawan)
Front-runner Prabowo Subianto has ramped up his presidential campaign this week with a flurry of visits to Sumatra, the second most populous island after Java, as his underwhelming performance at the latest debate might have lowered his chances of securing an outright victory in a single election round.
Since the campaign season started, Prabowo has been hitting the campaign trail only once or twice each weekend, leaving the weekdays to focus on his duties as defense minister as his and running mate Gibran Rakabuming Raka’s campaign team laid the groundwork.
But this appears to have changed last week, when Prabowo took three separate days to conduct a whistle-stop tour that covered eight out of Sumatra’s 10 provinces.
On Tuesday, he greeted his supporters in Riau, Jambi and South Sumatra, and then continued the pace on Thursday, making campaign stops in the neighboring provinces of Bengkulu, Lampung and Bangka Belitung.
The Gerindra Party chair concluded his tour on Saturday with stops in Medan, North Sumatra, and in Batam, Riau Islands, where he rallied support for the Palestinian cause.
Single round unlikely
With only a month left before the polls, analysts said Prabowo was intensifying his campaign in an effort to dampen the negative impacts of his underwhelming performance at the second presidential debate on Jan. 7.
