Indonesia’s Prabowo Subianto congratulated by China’s Xi, US’ Blinken over victory amid election challenges

“I attach great importance to the development of China-Indonesia relations and look forward to working together with President-elect Prabowo to lead the construction of a community with a shared future between the two countries to achieve greater results, create an example of major developing countries sharing a common destiny, unite, cooperate and seek common development, and serve as a model for the two peoples, that will bring more benefits to our people and inject strong impetus into regional and global prosperity and stability,” Xi said in a statement given to Chinese state news agency Xinhua on Thursday.

The congratulatory messages from Xi and others came as Prabowo’s two rivals, Anies Baswedan and Ganjar Pranowo, said they would issue constitutional challenges over the result, citing allegations of irregularities and fraud.

“I don’t foresee that there will be any drastic changes. China will still be one of the biggest investors in Indonesia,” said Yohanes Sulaiman, an international relations lecturer at the University of Achmad Yani in West Java.

In terms of defence collaboration, Sulaiman expected Prabowo to lean closer to the West than China, continuing the country’s partnership with the US and Europe that had been forged for decades.

“Militarily, Prabowo himself is closer to the US and Europe, than China. China cannot assume that it will get a replacement for Jokowi whose policies will be exactly like Jokowi’s. China must be more careful,” Sulaiman said, referring to Widodo’s popular nickname.

Indonesia’s election commission released its official tally late on Wednesday, declaring that Prabowo, who is Widodo’s defence minister, won the February 14 election with around 58.6 per cent of the vote.

Shortly after the