JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Tens of millions of Indonesians voted in presidential and legislative elections Wednesday after a campaign that pitted the moderate incumbent against an ultranationalist former general whose fear-based rhetoric warned that the country would fall apart without his strongman leadership.
Polling booths closed first in easternmost provinces such as Papua followed an hour later by central regions including Bali, and finally western provinces and Jakarta, the capital. Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of 17,000 islands and hundreds of ethnic groups, has three time zones.
Preliminary results based on so-called “quick counts” as votes are publicly tallied at polling stations were expected to start rolling in within two hours of the final poll closings. The quick counts from reputable survey organizations have been reliable in past elections.
About 193 million people were eligible to vote in elections that will decide who leads the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation and third-largest democracy after India and the U.S. Indonesians are voted for Senate and national, provincial and district legislatures.
The elections are a huge logistical exercise, with more than 800,000 polling stations and 17 million people involved in ensuring they run smoothly. Helicopters, boats and horses were used to get ballots to remote and inaccessible corners of the archipelago.
The presidential race is a choice between five more years of the steady progress achieved under Indonesia’s first president from outside the Jakarta elite, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, or electing Prabowo Subianto, who was a special forces general during the era of the Suharto military dictatorship.
Pre-election polls consistently gave a large lead of as much as 20 percentage points to Widodo and his running mate, conservative cleric Ma’ruf Amin, though analysts said the race was likely tighter.
“I’ve voted for Jokowi because five years in office was not enough for him to complete his brilliant programs for infrastructure, health and education,” said Eko Cahya Pratama, 43, after voting in Tangerang on the outskirts of Jakarta.
“For me, this country is better to be managed by a man with a clean track record rather than a dirty one in the past,” he said.
Widodo’s campaign highlighted his progress in poverty reduction and improving Indonesia’s inadequate infrastructure with new ports, toll roads, airports and mass rapid transit. The latter became a reality last month in chronically congested Jakarta with the opening of a subway.
A strident nationalist, Subianto ran a fear-based campaign, highlighting what he sees as Indonesia’s weakness and the risk of exploitation by foreign powers or disintegration...
