According to a report by Xinhua News Agency on the evening of February 14, 2024, statistics from a number of polling agencies in Indonesia show that the campaign combination composed of former Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto and the eldest son of the current **Jokowi, Jibran Rakabmin Raqqa, won the election of Indonesia's president and vice-president.
Prabowo Subianto, who was the second son-in-law of former Suharto, has long been considered to be the mastermind behind the 1998 Indonesian anti-Chinese incident. Previously, he lost to Jokowi in several ** elections, but this time he finally waited until the end of Jokowi's term to succeed in taking office.
It will be interesting to see whether Prabowo's ascension will have an impact on China-Indonesia relations.
In last year's Philippine election, the son of the former Marcos and the daughter of the current Duterte joined hands to win the position of president and vice-president, which is reminiscent of the political family phenomenon in the Philippine election.
In Indonesia, there are also many political families, and many important positions in the country** are controlled by these families. One can't help but wonder why there are so many political families in Southeast Asia?
Do other countries have such traditions? What else is interesting about this Indonesian election?
1 Indonesia and the Philippines are not the only countries in Southeast Asia, but also influential countries such as the Salasin family in Thailand, the Yun Mao Siu family in the minister's family, and the Lee Kuan Yew family in Singapore.
Among them, Lee Kuan Yew has a pivotal position as the founding prime minister of Singapore, and the current prime minister Lee Hsien Loong is his eldest son.
Despite the differences in the political systems of Laos and Cambodia, there are still many political families in the country. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has been prime minister for more than three decades and plans to pass the premiership to his son Hun Manet in 2023.
Except for Vietnam, which is a socialist country, other Southeast Asian countries have more or less political families, and the political resources of many countries are almost entirely monopolized by these families, which makes it difficult to avoid the problem of ** and corruption.
One wonders why Southeast Asia is particularly prone to such political families. One might think that this has something to do with the local political system, but there are also political families under two different political systems, Singapore and the Philippines.
The same is true of constitutional monarchies such as Cambodia and Thailand, where the emergence of political families does not depend entirely on the state system. In fact, the political family has little to do with the state system, on the contrary, the phenomenon of family monopoly of resources is prevalent in Singapore and Southeast Asian countries, not only in the political system, but also in the business system.
As you can see from these countries, they are all countries that are deeply influenced by China.
In traditional Chinese culture, the concept of the unity of the family and the country has deeply influenced the Chinese people, so that many families in Southeast Asia are of Chinese descent or descendants of Chinese descent. It can be seen that China's family culture has spread to Southeast Asia.
If China does not have a Communist Party in power, the KMT is likely to introduce family politics into the Chinese regime. Of course, there are other reasons for the prosperity of political families in Southeast Asia, such as economic backwardness and low cultural level of the people.
To sum up, the emergence of this phenomenon is the result of many factors. In the recent Indonesian elections, a lot of interesting phenomena emerged. Among them, Gibran, who successfully ran for the deputy **, is only 36 years old, and according to the Indonesian Constitution, under the age of 40 cannot participate in the election.
To this end, the Indonesian side has specially amended the constitution to stipulate that candidates must have held the positions of councillor, mayor or provincial governor through popular elections before running for office, so as to appropriately lower the age limit.
Gibran, who served as mayor of Solo before running for **, fits this rule perfectly.
The strength of Indonesia's political family is not to be underestimated, and they even changed the constitution for the 36-year-old Gibran to run for election. Will arbitrary changes to the constitution make national laws child's play?
Indonesia's election is indeed interesting, this election with a population of nearly 300 million, the fourth most populous country in the world, actually needs to complete the vote in just 6 hours, which makes the West ** call it the largest election in a single day.
Indonesia is also known as the country of a thousand islands, and there are 1 in the country70,000 islands, one-third of which are inhabited. As long as there are residents over the age of 17 on these islands, they need to be listed as ballot collection sites.
During Indonesia's rainy season in January, workers were required to deliver ballots spread across more than 6,000 islands to counting points within a short period of time. However, according to **, the damage rate of ballot transport is as high as 30%, and some people even joke that if the damaged ballot is used for elections, then one person will be elected.
In addition, in order to transport these ballots, a lot of manpower and material resources are required. According to statistics, there are more than 5.7 million temporary recruits for the Indonesian service**, which is a staggering number.