Indonesia's 2024 Presidential Election Could Be the Last Battle of the Titans
President-elect Joko Widodo takes the oath of office during his inaugural ceremonies, in which U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry represented President Obama, in Jakarta, Indonesia, on October 20, 2014.
Indonesia is gearing up for a monumental election on February 14, 2024, which is set to be the world's largest single-day election where citizens will vote for a new president, vice president, and thousands of government representatives. Despite being celebrated for its vibrant democratic process, Indonesia's political landscape remains dominated by leaders who amassed power during the Suharto era. Joko Widodo, the popular incumbent president, was an outsider who temporarily disrupted this pattern but has since learned to navigate the old guard's political terrain.
As the 2024 election approaches, Sana Jaffrey, a nonresident scholar in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a research fellow at the Australian National University's Department of Political and Social Change, writes how the old elite is backing various hopefuls, and how Widodo is determined to meddle in the race to secure his legacy, marking a generational shift in Indonesian politics.
