Four pollsters recently released the result of their respective electability survey in which all of them found that Prabowo Subianto-Gibran Rakabuming Raka was leading the race by a big margin. However, these pollsters found a different result on who will compete head-to-head against Prabowo-Gibran in the election runoff. Is it Ganjar Pranowo-Mahfud MD or Anies Baswedan-Muhaimin Iskandar? Can we trust these pollsters?

This article is part of a speech from Isabel Schnabel, member of the executive board of European Central Bank in Frankfurt am Main back in March 2022 titled ‘A new age of energy inflation: climateflation, fossilflation and greenflation. We’re interested in the speech because Mahfud MD, vice president candidate for Ganjar Pranowo, refused to answer a ‘trivial’ question from Gibran Rakabuming Raka, running mate of Prabowo Subianto, in last night’s second vice president debate. 

“Increasingly practicing low-class (kampungan) politics…As if the new capital city is his own statue,” one middle ranking government officer at ministry of public works and housing said about construction of IKN Nusantara in Penajam Paser Utara regency, East Kalimantan province. 

President candidate Prabowo Subianto believes that Indonesian can have a food security without necessarily importing foodstuffs. Prabowo, through his nephew Budisatrio Djiwandono, insists to continue the food estate program, deemed a big failure by many. Seriously?

The State Palace denied the rumor that some ministers might leave President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s cabinet. The State Palace stated that all ministers remain solid and united behind the President until the end of the President’s term. Let’s talk a bit about this ongoing rumor.

Nine months to leaving office (disgracefully?), Jokowi kicked off construction of a mosque capable of accommodating 61,000 worshipers at the new capital city (IKN) Nusantara in East Kalimantan. The mosque, he said, should be completed end of this year. IKN Authority, interestingly said that the State Mosque is one of 28 projects to be ‘functional’ by June. What are they trying to say? Why the rush?

Two pollsters, LSI Denny JA and Indikator Politik Indonesia, released the result of their respective electability survey on Thursday (Jan. 18). Both of them found that Prabowo Subianto and his running mate Gibran Rakabuming Raka were still leading the race by a big margin, but it was not enough to seal a victory in one round.

In the previous installment of the article, we’ve predicted that the competition in Central Java, especially between Ganjar Pranowo-Mahfud MD and Prabowo Subianto-Gibran Rakabuming Raka in 2024 race might be more exciting to watch following President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s political break-up from the ruling party PDIP. Litbang Kompas, the research division of Kompas, the largest newspaper in Indonesia, has just released the results of its survey, in which they indeed found a tight competition between Ganjar-Mahfud and Prabowo-Gibran in Central Java.

This weekend, the three vice presidential candidates will once again engage in a debate scheduled to be held at the Jakarta Convention Center (JCC) in Senayan, Central Jakarta. Let’s talk a bit about this next debate. The second and last round of debate between the...