Jakarta: An explosion outside a south Jakarta stadium complex has sent hundreds of people watching a presidential election debate scrambling for safety.
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The explosion took place in a parking lot that is part of the Gelora Bung Karno stadium complex at around 8.15pm local time on Sunday.
Hundreds of supporters of President Joko Widodo and his opponent Prabowo Subianto had gathered to watch the second debate outside in the stadium complex on big TV screens.
The debate itself was taking place about 500 metres away at the Sultan Hotel.
Jakarta Police chief Gatot Eddy Pramono claimed that preliminary investigations indicated a firecracker had gone off, although footage of the incident appeared more serious.
"We will investigate the CCTV footage to see who put it there," he said.
Dozens of police descended on the scene and the supporters of both candidates rapidly fled after the explosion, which took a large chunk out of a tree and broke the windows of cars parked nearby.
Hasto Kristiyanto, from the President's campaign team, said that he understood two campaign volunteers at the scene had been injured in the incident.
The two volunteers were taken to hospital, where one received emergency treatment, Hasto told CNN Indonesia.
Faisal Rizal, who was on the scene when the explosion went off but did not see it, described moments of terror in the immediate aftermath.
"We thought it was a bomb. Everyone just ran away, we thought it was a terrorist attack. Something that big, in Jakarta? People were just running away," he said.
"I went to the medical centre and they said no one was injured.”
CCTV footage of the incident seen by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald shows a cloud of smoke about three or four metres in diameter billowing out from the base of a tree in the moments after the explosion.
Indonesia is on edge ahead of the April 17 presidential election.
Contender Prabowo, as Subianto is popularly known, used the debate on Sunday night to pledge to halt imports of food crops and expand the use of biofuels to lower reliance on fossil fuel as he sought to narrow the gap to the President in opinion polls.
Prabowo blamed the governemet's agriculture policies for rising imports of commodities such as sugar, wheat and corn and harming the interest of local farmers. Widodo, known as Jokowi, defended the shipments of food crops, saying they were necessary to ensure price stability.
Stung by criticisms that the first presidential debate was too staged, the two men spoke without notes and faced more questions from moderators on energy, food, infrastructure and environment.
The debate was held against a backdrop of an increasingly heated election campaign, which has seen Jokowi step up attacks on Prabowo with allegations that he employed foreign consultants. Accusations of Russian influence have also been rife.
Jokowi is seeking a new mandate to carry on the infrastructure building boom and economic nationalism that's marked his first term.
Prabowo said he would safeguard state-controlled natural resources and punish companies damaging the environment and engaging in illegal mining. He has already promised to slash company and individual tax rates to rejuvenate the region's largest economy.
Jokowi is leading in opinion polls by around 20 percentage points, according to surveys in late January. Polls indicate Prabowo may be narrowing the gap, with an Indikator Politik Indonesia survey showing his electability rising to 34.8 per cent in January from 30 per cent a month earlier.
With Bloomberg
