Incumbent candidate Joko “Jokowi” Widodo came out strong in the second presidential debate on Sunday, fending off attacks launched by his rival Prabowo Subianto with confidence.

During the debate, Jokowi highlighted his achievements during the past four-and-a-half years, while Prabowo repeatedly pointed out Jokowi’s weaknesses, though he failed to deliver a knock-out blow to his rival.

It was the first encounter between the two rivals without their respective running mates. They debated issues on energy, infrastructure, food and the environment.

Dressed in his trademark plain white shirt, Jokowi said the government had built more than 191,000 kilometers of road for the “little people”, toll roads, dams, airports, railway lines and much more, to develop connectivity between regions.

While his rival Prabowo expressed appreciation for Jokowi’s work on improving infrastructure, he criticized that infrastructure development was not efficient, taking the examples of the light rail transit (LRT) in Palembang, South Sumatra, and Kertajati International Airport in West Java.

“I appreciate Pak Jokowi’s intention in building infrastructure. But most likely, his team worked inefficiently. They worked in a rush without proper feasibility studies. Some of the projects have suffered losses,” he said, without offering a solution to the issue of losses.

In response, Jokowi explained that infrastructure projects — such as the LRT in Palembang and Kertajati airport — will benefit people in the long term. However, he argued, it may take a long time for people to shift their behavior from using private vehicles to public transportation.

The presidential debate also touched on improving the life of farmers through Industry 4.0.

Jokowi explained that Indonesia now had peer-to-peer lending companies like TaniHub, which could help farmers obtain good prices through its platform.

On questions on the environment related to agrarian reform, Jokowi said in two years the government had distributed 2.5 million hectares of concessions for forests for indigenous people. “We distributed 5 million land certificates in 2017 and 7 million certificates in 2018. They can use these certificates as collateral for access to the financial system.”

Prabowo said if he was chosen as president, he would have a different strategy, because the current strategy under Jokowi would not be sufficient in the future as the country would run out of land to distribute.

Replying to Prabowo, Jokowi went on the offensive, “I know that Pak Prabowo has a lot of land, for example 220,000 ha and also 120,000 ha in central Aceh.”

During the last segment of the debate, Prabowo was given the first chance to table a question for his opponent. He asked why Jokowi still had to import many food commodities during his stint as president, in which he broke his 2014 campaign promise.

“You said during your 2014 campaign that you wouldn’t import any food commodities, but we still see imports entering the country,” Prabowo stated.

Jokowi responded by saying that the country’s imports of corn had significantly decreased from 3.5 million tons in 2014 to only 180,000 tons in 2018.

He also said that the amount of rice imports had also decreased significantly over the years. “Last year, our rice production reached 33 million tons while our consumption was only 29 million tons,” he said.

He added that despite the surplus of almost 3 million tons, Indonesia still imported rice to maintain stock availability and price stability, as well as a precaution for natural disasters or crop failures.

Jokowi tried to take advantage of the age gap between him and Prabowo when he was given the chance to question his 67-year-old rival.

He asked Prabowo about his plans for Indonesian unicorns, a term used for start-ups that are valued at more than US$1 billion. “What infrastructure will you build to support the development of Indonesia’s unicorns?” he asked.

Prabowo, at first, seemed confused by the question, demonstrating his unfamiliarity with the term. “What you mean by unicorn is those online thingies, right?”

This question proved to be a disadvantage for Prabowo as he failed to mention the need to build the necessary internet and broadband infrastructure. Instead, he focused his answer on regulations, saying that current regulations were hindering the growth of the country’s start-ups, citing the newly issued e-commerce tax.

Jokowi then used the opportunity to flaunt his knowledge about cutting-edge technological jargon and also what his government had done to support local start-ups.

Tommy Tjokro and Anisha Dasuki, who were the moderators of the presidential debate, seemed to be overwhelmed when trying to keep the audience calm in a room filled with 600 supporters from both camps.

An explosion also occurred outside the venue of the presidential debate as officials said there was a loud noise and thick gray smoke in the area. National Police spokesman Dedi Prasetyo, however, said the explosion was caused by fireworks.