World's largest Muslim country goes to polls

Indonesians have begun casting their votes in the country's presidential and legislative elections. Polling booths opened at 7am on Wednesday in eastern provinces, with voting getting underway in the capital Jakarta two hours later.

Hyderabad: Voting for presidential and legislative polls in the world's 14th largest country by land area, and 7th largest by combined land and sea area and also the largest Muslim country and the world's 3rd largest democracy Indonesia closed at 11.30 am on Wednesday.

Poll Facts-1

More than 19 crore voters of the country's 27 crore people cast their votes in favour of roughly 2,45,000 candidates. All eyes are, however, reveted on Joko Widodo the incumbent President and his challenger Prabowo Subianto-a former army general.

A total of 8,10,000 polling stations were there for the voters who were widely distributed across more than 17,000 islands that is Indonesia. Costs of staging the elections are estimated around 2 billion US dollars.

Poll Pacts-3

Widodo came in power with promises of change, secularism and economic prosperity. But his economic prosperity now depends largely on Chinese investments in the country. And this has irked many Indonesians. They fear if China is allowed to flex its economic muscle, then Indonesia will become totally dependent on China and the country will lose its freedom.

Poll Facts-2

Widodo's challenger Prabowo has seized these sentiments. He vows to banish China if he comes to power. He promises to make Indonesia self-sufficient and wants to stop imports.

In Muslim Indonesia, it is a hard job to maintain secular character of the nation. So Widodo, who had secular credentials, has now leaned towards hardliners. He has chosen Maruf Amin, a Muslim hardliner as his running mate. Prabowo, however, is pro- Muslim conservative from the very outset.

So the outcome of the polls will decide whether Indonesia will become closer to China or will move away from it. One thing, however, is fairly certain - Muslim Indonesia will veer towards more conservatism.