Jakarta: In 2014, when former Indonesian general Prabowo Subianto faced off against Jakarta's political cleanskin former governor Joko Widodo, some feared the fate of Indonesian democracy itself was at stake.
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Sixteen years after the fall of the dictator Soeharto in 1998, Prabowo, his former son-in-law kicked off a debate in the final week of the campaign about whether, in fact, Indonesia needed direct elections to choose its president at all.
The direct election system, Prabowo suggested, that had been introduced only in 2002 via constitutional amendments was too Western, too expensive and a departure from the consensus-style approach to politics that Indonesians preferred.
Widodo, universially known as "Jokowi," won the 2014 election on a hope-and-change platform that had echoes of Barack Obama's famous victory, and questions about the future of Indonesia's electoral system have faded into the background.
Fast-forward nearly five years and Jokowi will once again face Prabowo on April 17, when 190 million Indonesians will vote for the first time to simultaneously choose their president and a new parliament.
Much has changed in the intervening five years.
In 2014 the so-called "black" campaign of online slurs was mostly one-way, with supporters of Prabowo spreading rumours that suggested Jokowi was (secretly) a Christian, or ethnically Chinese, or both.
This time around, Jokowi has sought to inoculate himself against such social media-fuelled rumours.
The consequence has been that both candidates have embraced Islam like never before in a presidential campaign, in a nation where the official state ideology, Pancasila, is a byword for pluralism and tolerance.
Prabowo and his running mate, Sandiaga Uno, talk up promises to build up sharia-based industries such as in the finance and banking sector, and halal tourism. They want to bring down the cost of the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, too.
Jokowi, who is seeking a second five-year term, has used his time in office to make the construction of the International Islamic Indonesian University in Depok a national strategic project and established 41 micro-finance banks in Islamic boarding schools (pesantren) to help low-income Indonesians.
He has also flirted with the early release from jail of Abu Bakar Bashir, the spiritual leader of the Bali bombers, and chosen as his running mate Ma'ruf Amin, an ageing cleric and head of the world's largest (and relatively moderate) Islamic organisation, the Nahdlatul Ulama.
Aaron Connelly, a research fellow at Singapore's International Institute for Strategic Studies and a close observer of Indonesian politics, is blunt in his assessment: "Islam is playing a much bigger role than it did five years ago.
"It's more pronounced than 2014 ... Jokowi has rushed to catch up [to Prabowo]."
The inflexion point, for Connelly, was in late 2016 when huge protests broke out against the ethnically-Chinese Christian governor of Jakarta, Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama for alleged blasphemy against Islam. Ahok had been Jokowi's deptuy and protege, and took over from him as governor.
Ahok was found guilty by the court system in 2017 and jailed for nearly two years, despite questionable evidence, and Jokowi walked away from his former ally.
"In the [presidential] palace at that time, paranoia set in," Connelly says. "There was a two-pronged strategy - reaching out to some Muslim organisations and seeking to co-opt them, and on the other hand trying to push out those who resisted this effort."
Arguably, the selection of Ma'ruf Amin - who recently apologised for testifying against Ahok in the 2016 blasphemy trial - best highlights the president's effort to re-calibrate and reach more conservative-minded Muslims.
Just as when Obama was seeking a second term, this time around some of the gloss has come off the incumbent.
Though Jokowi can point to significant investments in road and rail infrastructure and the distribution of millions of land ownership certificates to poor farmers, other promises such as improving social services, tackling head-on the legacy of human rights abuses and mass killings of the anti-Communist purges in 1965 and 66 and achieving annual economic growth at around 7 per cent (it hovers at around 5 per cent) have not been met.
Similarly, the Prabowo of 2014 - dogged by allegations of human rights abuses while he was a commander in special forces unit Kopassus, famous for his fiery speeches, huge rallies, populist-nationalist policies (many of which he shared and still shares with Jokowi) and tegas (firmness) - is not quite the firebrand he once was.
The Australian National University's Indonesia-expert Marcus Mietzner says it is "somewhat misleading to suggest that both sides are pandering to 'conservative Muslims' because truly 'conservative Muslims are solidly locked in for Prabowo and would never even consider voting for Jokowi".
He estimates the conservative cohort at about 30 per cent of voters. Jokowi has support from a larger proportion of the electorate - perhaps 40 per cent - including minorities and secular or liberal Muslims. That means the contest is for the final 30 per cent, the so-called mainstream Muslims, who could go either way.
Both camps are trying to find reasons why the other candidate is unelectable and make it stick.
Of course, representatives of both the major candidates see things rather less sceptically.
Usman Kansong, a official in Jokowi's campaign, says the president chose Ma'ruf as his running mate to "reduce the politicising of religion and minimise the practice of political identity".
The president, he points out, disbanded the radical Hizb ut-Tahrir group.
"Whoever the leader of Indonesia is, he or she must deal with Islam but the question is which kind of Islam? Pak Jokowi chose NU [Nahdlatul Ulama] and Muhammadiyah [another mass, moderate-leaning Islamic organisation]."
And Prabowo campaign spokesman Andre Rosiade, too, plays down the importance to his candidate of pursuing conservative voters.
"In principle, for us, whoever has the right to vote is important regardless of their faith, ethnicity, conservative or not conservative," he says.
What about the sharia-based industry plan? That, he says, is just about capturing the economic potential of the growing "halal tourism" dollar, which Thailand and Japan are already doing.
"The philosophy is not about religion or politics, it’s purely economic. The economic potential is so big. Indonesia’s biggest problem right now is not politics or religion but the economy. And friendly countries should not be afraid if Prabowo-Sandi win the election because both are Western-educated."
The ANU's Mietzner is more skeptical about the conduct of both candidates' campaign teams to date.
"The Prabowo camp is essentially re-running the 2014 themes: Jokowi is a communist, is going to secularise Indonesia, sell the country to the Chinese kafir [infidel]. It is the Jokowi camp that has significantly stepped up its campaign in this regard in comparison to 2014," he says.
"It now runs an aggressive, above-the-ground campaign that suggests Prabowo is not a practicing Muslim; that his Muslim credentials are in doubt because of his non-Muslim family members; and that he doesn't have an intact family, given his divorce and (although this remains unspoken) gay son. Jokowi's parading of his grandchildren during the campaign hit right into this spot."
So while 2014 was a rather one-sided smear campaign by Prabowo's team against Jokowi, Mietzner says, "this time it's collective mud throwing from all sides".
