Failed Indonesian presidential candidate Anies Baswedan challenged Prabowo Subianto’s decisive victory at the Constitutional Court on Thursday, alleging rules were unfairly changed to allow the outgoing leader’s son to run as his vice president.
Anies’ call for a new vote comes a day after Defence Minister Prabowo, 72, was confirmed as the next leader of the world’s third-biggest democracy, beating former Jakarta governor Anies and a third rival with 58.6 percent of the vote.
But his campaign was mired in allegations that outgoing leader Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, had interfered in a bid to establish a political dynasty, engineering rules changes that allowed his eldest son Gibran Rakabuming Raka to run as Prabowo’s vice president.
“We asked for the disqualification of the vice presidential candidate… and we asked for a revote with that said VP candidate being replaced,” Anies’s legal chief Ari Yusuf Amir told AFP.
“We also asked the Constitutional Court to order the president to stop meddling in the next process of the election.”