JAKARTA: Protesters sitting and posing as policemen keeping watch during a demonstration outside the Elections Oversight Body (Bawaslu) in Jakarta on Tuesday Related — AFP JAKARTA, May 21 (AP): Indonesia's President Joko Widodo has been elected for a second term, official results showed on Tuesday, in a victory over a would-be strongman who aligned himself with Islamic hardliners.
Official counting was completed just before midnight and the Election Commission announced the formal result early Tuesday. It said Widodo won 55.5 per cent of the vote in the April 17 election to 45.5 pc for his challenger, ultra-nationalist former general Prabowo Subianto.
Thousands of police and soldiers are on high alert in the capital Jakarta, anticipating protests from supporters of Subianto, who refuses to concede defeat. The Election Commission's headquarters in central Jakarta are barricaded with razor wire and heavily guarded.
Subianto, who also lost to Widodo in 2014, has alleged massive election fraud in the world's third-largest democracy but hasn't provided any credible evidence. Votes are counted publicly and the commission posts the tabulation form from each polling station on its website, allowing for independent verification.
The formal result was almost the same as the preliminary "quick count" results drawn from a sample of polling stations on election day.
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation, is an outpost of democracy in a Southeast Asian neighborhood of authoritarian governments and is forecast to be among the world's biggest economies by 2030.
A second term for Widodo, the first Indonesian president from outside the Jakarta elite, could further cement the country's two decades of democratization.
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