Third time’s the charm. After a decade on the losing side of presidential politics, Prabowo Subianto finally captured Indonesia’s top office in 2024. An ex-general with a strongman image, who embraced populist rhetoric, Prabowo stood in direct opposition to Joko Widodo, the man he had challenged in two bitterly contested elections. In his 2014 and 2019 presidential runs, he questioned the legitimacy of election results and ran campaigns laced with conspiracy theories that targeted Jokowi’s religion and ethnicity. But in a dramatic political one-eighty, Prabowo thoroughly reinvented himself as the cheerful “Pak Gemoy,” an adorable grandfather figure on TikTok, running as the successor to Jokowi’s legacy, with Jokowi’s own son as his running mate. His transformation from a polarizing military figure to a TikTok-friendly statesman was as calculated as it was surreal.  And while it delivered a decisive victory, Prabowo’s successes also raise unsettling questions about what Indonesian democracy may be willing to overlook in an age so susceptible to digital charisma.

Making the General
Long before his political rise as an affable “gemoy” grandpa, Prabowo Subianto began his career as a precocious commando in the Indonesian Military. Born into Indonesia’s elite, Prabowo’s grandfather was one of the founders of the National Bank of Indonesia, and his father was Sukarno’s minister of finance until 1956. His family was forced into exile in 1958 when his father participated in the failed PRRI-Permesta rebellion, and Prabowo was educated in large part abroad. After the Sukarno government fell in 1967, Prabowo’s father returned to Indonesia to serve as the new dictator Suharto’s Minister of Trade. Prabowo enrolled in the military academy in 1970, graduating in 1974, and within two years was the youngest commander in the Indonesian special forces (KOPASSUS).

In 1983, he cemented his ties to power by marrying Titiek Suharto, daughter of then-President Suharto. With that union, Prabowo became family, literally, to the regime that had brought his family back into the good graces of Indonesian politics. From there, he became a key player in maintaining order, particularly in East Timor and West Papua, where the Indonesian army was engaged in brutal suppression campaigns.

As Indonesia’s democratic crisis mounted in 1997 with mass protests and a collapsing economy, Prabowo remained one of the few high-ranking officers committed to opposing the pro-democracy protests, advocating for harsher military crackdowns. His name is forever tied to the disappearance of 22 pro-democracy activists during this period, a scandal that still casts a long shadow. Of those abducted, nine eventually resurfaced and recounted being tortured. Thirteen remain missing to this day.

Nonetheless, the regime fell, and the day after Suharto resigned on May 21, 1998, Prabowo was dismissed from his post by interim President B.J. Habibie following reports that troops under Prabowo’s command were moving into Jakarta and converging around the new president’s residence. This marked an abrupt fall for a man who had spent 20 years climbing the ranks of a regime that no longer existed.

Opposition and Opportunism
After his fall from grace, Prabowo spent several years in political limbo. His initial attempt to re-enter politics came in 2004 when he sought the presidential nomination from the Golkar party. His effort failed, being eliminated on the first ballot. Undeterred, Prabowo launched his own political vehicle, the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), in 2008. The following year, he ran in a coalition as Megawati Sukarnoputri’s vice-presidential candidate, losing to Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s (SBY) re-election campaign.

It was in 2014 that Prabowo returned to center-stage, casting himself as a nationalist populist, courting a coalition of Islamist and nationalist parties in his first presidential bid. He described his coalition as including “religious parties and nationalist parties, though within those nationalist parties we find religiosity, and within those religious parties we find nationalism.” However, while Prabowo’s formal campaign was able to maintain some baseline of civility, the 2014 presidential race was, in reality, defined by a conspiratorial smear campaign targeted overwhelmingly at Prabowo’s opponent.

Joko Widodo became the target of a smear campaign that painted him as secretly Chinese and Christian.  A tabloid called Obor Rakyat (The People’s Torch) circulated widely within mosques and pesantren (Islamic boarding schools) across Java, promoting this conspiracy. Its editor-in-chief was a staff assistant to SBY, whose party supported Prabowo. In parallel, on social media, a fake birth certificate circulated, similarly listing Jokowi as Chinese and Christian.

Piling onto the religious smear, the hardline Forum Umat Islam (FUI) declared it haram for Muslims to vote for Jokowi. In response, Jokowi made a brief pilgrimage to Mecca just days before the vote, a move Prabowo’s camp derided as a cynical ploy to win over muslim voters.

After the election, in an unprecedented challenge to Indonesia’s young democratic institutions, Prabowo refused to concede, claiming victory based on a small minority of favorable quick counts, and alleging widespread electoral fraud. He brought the case to the Constitutional Court, which denied his appeal.

In 2019, things boiled over. Despite losing in an electoral wipe-out, Prabowo again rejected the results, declared victory, and alleged massive fraud. This time, the aftermath turned deadly, as protests in Jakarta devolved into riots that left six dead. While the Constitutional Court again upheld Jokowi’s win, Prabowo’s actions deepened political polarization and underscored his role as a populist agitator. Before 2023, this was the Prabowo the public knew, a disgraced former-general turned nationalist firebrand, at odds with the establishment that cast him out.

Jokowi’s Man
Prabowo Subianto’s return to the political mainstream after his 2019 presidential defeat marked a dramatic reinvention of his public image, from a perennial opposition figure to an establishment candidate. The turning point came in the aftermath of the 2019 election, when President Joko Widodo surprised many by appointing Prabowo as Indonesia’s Minister of Defense. This move signaled not only reconciliation between the two former rivals but also Prabowo’s reintegration into the highest echelons of power.

As Defense Minister, Prabowo cultivated the image of a responsible statesman. He traveled widely, representing Indonesia in international forums and securing strategic defense partnerships. Notably, his long-standing travel ban to the United States, imposed due to allegations of human rights abuses during his military career, was lifted in 2020, allowing him to visit Washington, D.C. as a minister of state. The gesture held symbolic significance: Prabowo was no longer a pariah, but a credible actor on the global stage.

This rehabilitation laid the groundwork for his 2024 presidential campaign, which embraced continuity over confrontation. Prabowo positioned himself as the inheritor of Jokowi’s political legacy, echoing his policies, embracing his technocratic pragmatism, and most crucially, choosing Jokowi’s son, Gibran Rakabuming, as his running mate. The pairing signaled more than just a political alliance; it was widely interpreted as an endorsement of Prabowo’s pivot from challenger to consensus figure.

His outreach also extended to former adversaries. In a significant symbolic move, Prabowo met with Wiranto, his former commander and one of the key figures behind his dismissal from the military in 1998, to seek support and publicly acknowledge his former superior. 

While Jokowi’s ruling party, the PDI-P, chose to back its own candidate, Ganjar Pranowo, Prabowo was buoyed by the tacit support of Jokowi himself. The president’s frequent public appearances with Prabowo, combined with endorsements from pro-Jokowi volunteer groups, further blurred partisan lines and reinforced Prabowo’s image as the authentic heir to Jokowi’s extremely popular legacy.

The General Goes Soft
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Prabowo also underwent a near-complete overhaul of his image, shifting from a formidable military figure to an endearing, approachable candidate. This strategic rebranding aimed to resonate with Indonesia’s youthful electorate, particularly millennials and Gen Z voters.

Central to this transformation was the creation of Prabowo’s “Gemoy” persona, a term derived from Indonesian slang meaning “cute” or “adorable.” This image was meticulously crafted through the widespread use of AI-generated cartoon avatars, produced using tools like Midjourney. These avatars depicted Prabowo and his running mate, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, in a soft, cartoonish style, often seen in campaign materials, merchandise, and online content. 

The campaign’s volunteer arm launched the PrabowoGibran.ai platform in December 2023, empowering over 15,000 “cyber troops” to generate and share AI-created art across social media platforms.

Prabowo’s social media presence played a pivotal role in humanizing his image. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram became venues for showcasing a more relatable side of the candidate. Viral posts featured Prabowo uncharacteristically informal in a campaign-branded hoodie, dancing awkwardly at events, and cuddling his cat, moments that endeared him to younger voters.

This shift towards a more informal and lighthearted persona was interpreted as a deliberate strategy to soften Prabowo’s previously stern and authoritative image. His campaign surrogates emphasized his humor and approachability, even attributing his choice of wearing light blue attire during the first presidential debate to this effort to appear more soft.

The Future Forgot the Past
Prabowo Subianto’s dramatic political and aesthetic reinvention didn’t occur in a vacuum; it was accomplished within a rapidly changing electoral landscape. One critical dynamic of the 2024 election was the generational shift among Indonesian voters. Over 52% of likely voters were under the age of 40. For these voters, the fall of Suharto was more a matter of history than experience. Many were children when Prabowo was discharged from the military under allegations of human rights abuses, and some weren’t even born.

This generational amnesia created fertile ground for Prabowo’s transformation. His past, once a political albatross, was largely overlooked by a younger electorate more immersed in social media than in the long shadow of Suharto’s legacy. The aggressive strongman of the 2000s was rebranded as “Pak Gemoy,” the cuddly, dancing grandpa on TikTok. Some older voters remained skeptical, and exit polls show Prabowo was the least popular among those over 60, winning just 47.1% of that cohort. In contrast, he dominated among the youth, securing an astounding 71% of the Gen Z vote. This stark generational divide helps explain both the mechanics and the success of Prabowo’s pivot. But it raises significant doubts about the possibility of political accountability or of a sober reckoning with the not-so-distant past.

Prabowo’s campaign was an audacious reinvention, but also a reminder: As we enter an era in which short-form content dominates a larger and larger share of the media ecosystem, the past can be surprisingly easy to outrun, especially when your audience wasn’t there to see it firsthand.