Opposition candidates join forces in final VP debate
Attacks on the ruling government stole the show at the second and final vice presidential candidate debate on Sunday, when Muhaimin Iskandar and Mahfud MD of the two opposition camps pushed the establishment's symbol Gibran Rakabuming Raka into a corner. While all three expressed their commitment to sustainable development, their onstage battle overshadowed the penultimate election debate's theme of environment, food and energy security, land reform and indigenous communities.
Anies Baswedan's running mate Muhaimin landed the opening jab when he criticizing the government for letting a single entity control a massive land area, in an obvious reference to presidential front-runner Prabowo Subianto, whose running mate is Gibran. The National Awakening Party (PKB) chairman also criticized as a failure the food estate, one of President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo's signature programs entrusted to Prabowo, regardless of his job as defense minister. Muhaimin said the food estate had caused serious environmental damage and triggered land conflicts between the state and the people.
Ganjar Pranowo's vice presidential candidate Mahfud highlighted the environmental damage resulting from the government's industrialization policy. The coordinating political, legal and security affairs minister also criticized the exploitation of natural resources that had led to disputes at the grassroots level, and threw his own punches against the food estate project.
Muhaimin and Mahfud both homed in on the food estate program, knowing that it was Prabowo's Achilles heel, as proven during the second presidential debate on Jan. 7.
Gibran defended his father's policies, vowing to continue the Jokowi administration's downstream development policy across various sectors, including technology, agriculture and fisheries. He also promised to stabilize the prices of fertilizer and seeds, as well as basic needs. As for the food estate, Gibran claimed the success of the program in Gunung Mas, Central Kalimantan, pointing to recent corn and cassava harvests.
The vice presidential debate picked up on the controversial food estate program, considering the social and ecological damage it has been linked to, including flooding, elimination of traditional hunting grounds and other material losses, especially for the Dayak communities in Kalimantan.1
Besides doling out campaign promises, the candidates entertained the public with several notable exchanges. these included Gibran's sarcastic jab at Muhaimin about using a cheat sheet, whereas he apparently carried no notes. Gibran also made some mocking gestures toward Mahfud when the senior minister struggled to answer his question about "greenflation", which was apparently was not in the veteran politician's vocabulary. An offended Mahfud retorted by saying the question was not worth his input.
In contrast, Muhaimin and Mahfud exchanged similar views about deforestation, with the former agreeing with the latter that the Jokowi administration had failed to eliminate deforestation and to achieve food security.
One political expert said the gestures Gibran made during the debate would leave a negative impression among the public, noting that voters were sensitive to the candidates' debate performance in deciding who to elect on Feb. 14.11 The expert also opined that the First Son was banking too much on gimmicks to hide his inability to respond to the combined offensive from Muhaimin and Mahfud.
According to media monitoring group Drone Emprit, Muhaimin scored 80 percent positive, 6 percent negative and 14 percent neutral in terms of his image among users of social platform X (formerly Twitter). Mahfud also scored a similarly positive perception among X users at 79 percent positive, 12 percent negative and 9 percent neutral. In contrast, Gibran lagged with 33 percent positive, 60 percent negative and 7 percent neutral.12
President Jokowi declined to comment on his son's performance during the final VP debate.
The food estate success story Gibran threw out during the debate has in fact been debunked by environmental activists, including the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi). The group pointed out the inaccuracies in his statement, saying that the program had produced low-quality corn grown in polybags. In addition, corn was planted on only around 600 hectares, whereas hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest had been cleared for the food estate.13
Meanwhile, an energy expert regretted that the debate reflected the poor awareness of clean energy among the Indonesian public and focused more on non-energy natural resources, such as plantations and mineral processing. The current administration had also set a relatively low target of just 23 percent renewable energy shares by 2025, the expert said. This was much lower than the government's previous target, set in September 2022, of 31.89 percent or 43.2 percent with international assistance.14
Analysis by the Prabowo campaign team found that the social media accounts spreading negative narratives about Gibran were not affiliated with President Jokowi, Prabowo or Gibran. A source with the Prabowo campaign said, however, that the election debates would not significantly impact voters, citing the team's research results, the debates would influence only 3-4 percent of voters, especially those undecided. "Its impact is not significant, unless there is a major blunder on the stage," the source said.
The source also said the campaign team was gathering several influential celebrities to back Prabowo, including Raffi Ahmad, Atta Halilintar and Ria Ricis, as celebrities with millions of online followers were expected to neutralize the negative sentiments about Prabowo and Gibran.
Aside from celebrity endorsements, the team continued to spend big on advertisements in various mass media, though the source declined to disclose the contract value or identify the media outlets. The source added that even before the debates began, the ongoing narrative was that Gibran had the best performance compared to his rivals.
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