{"id":210377,"date":"2019-04-17T01:15:55","date_gmt":"2019-04-17T05:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=210377"},"modified":"2019-04-17T01:15:55","modified_gmt":"2019-04-17T05:15:55","slug":"indonesians-vote-in-vast-democratic-exercise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/04\/17\/indonesians-vote-in-vast-democratic-exercise\/","title":{"rendered":"Indonesians vote in vast democratic exercise"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_210380\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-210380\" style=\"width: 1000px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/shutterstock_1121761406-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-210380\" src=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/shutterstock_1121761406-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"667\" srcset=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/shutterstock_1121761406-1.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/shutterstock_1121761406-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/shutterstock_1121761406-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/shutterstock_1121761406-1-20x13.jpg 20w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-210380\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">FILE: he ballot box used in the regional head elections in Makassar City. The election is also conducted simultaneously in all cities in Indonesia (Herwin Bahar \/ Shutterstock.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>JAKARTA,\u00a0Indonesia\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Indonesia&#8217;s elections pit Joko Widodo, the first Indonesian president from outside the Jakarta elite, against Prabowo Subianto, a former special forces general from the era of authoritarian rule under military dictator Suharto.<\/p>\n<p>Some facts and figures about Wednesday&#8217;s elections:<\/p>\n<p>\u2013\u2013\u2013<\/p>\n<p>BY THE NUMBERS<\/p>\n<p>Nearly 193 million Indonesians are eligible to vote in the archipelago stretching across thousands of islands and three time zones.<\/p>\n<p>The 810,000 polling stations have more than 1.6 million bottles of halal-certified indelible ink ready. Voters will dip a finger in the ink after casting their votes as an anti-fraud measure.<\/p>\n<p>The Election Commission estimates more than 17 million people are involved in ensuring the elections run smoothly, including volunteers, guards and registered witnesses for every polling station.<\/p>\n<p>About 20,500 candidates are standing for the presidency, the Senate and legislatures at the national, provincial and district levels.<\/p>\n<p>Staging the election will cost about $1.9 billion.<\/p>\n<p>\u2013\u2013\u2013<\/p>\n<p>DEMOCRATIC OUTPOST<\/p>\n<p>After three decades of military rule ended in 1998,\u00a0Indonesia\u00a0has become the most robust democracy in Southeast Asia, a region where authoritarian governments and stage-managed elections are the norm.<\/p>\n<p>But despite being the world&#8217;s most populous Muslim nation, the third-largest democracy and a member of the Group of 20 major economies,\u00a0Indonesia\u00a0has a low profile on the world stage. That is slowly changing, with the country recently becoming a non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, announcing a bid to host the 2032 Olympics and analysts forecasting its economy to be among the world&#8217;s five largest by 2030.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JAKARTA,\u00a0Indonesia\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Indonesia&#8217;s elections pit Joko Widodo, the first Indonesian president from outside the Jakarta elite, against Prabowo Subianto, a former special &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":210380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210377"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":210381,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210377\/revisions\/210381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}