Jakarta. Presidential hopeful Prabowo Subianto said Tuesday that he would risk his life to defend democracy while promising to fight corruption if he wins the upcoming election. 

Delivering his opening remarks in the inaugural presidential debate, Prabowo said that when he was younger, he had taken an oath to fight for the national ideology Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution.

“In the 1945 Constitution, our founding fathers established this republic. And this republic must be based on law and people’s sovereignty,” Prabowo said in the presence of other candidates Anies Baswedan and Ganjar Pranowo.

“That is what I have been fighting for all this time. And I risk my life and soul to fight for democracy, law, and human rights,” Prabowo said.

Prabowo admitted that there were still problems that the government needs to address. Even so, Indonesia remains a peaceful country amidst the world grappling with uncertainties and chaos, according to Prabowo. He also got fired up when he promised to fight corruption.

“We will fix what needs fixing. We will enforce what needs to be enforced. We vow to root out corruption, root out corruption,” Prabowo said.

As many as 204.8 million people will cast their ballots in February. Prabowo, who was a former army lieutenant general, currently serves as the defense minister.

The 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index gives Indonesia a score of 34. The index ranks the perceived levels of public sector corruption on a scale of 0-100. Zero means the country is “highly corrupt” while 100 means “very clean”. The 2022 Democracy Index shows that Indonesia has an overall score of 6.71. 

Prabowo has picked President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s eldest son Gibran Rakabuming Raka as his running mate. Prabowo is the early frontrunner according to various polls. The recently announced Poltracking survey shows that Prabowo-Gibran secured an electability rating of 45.2 percent, followed by Ganjar-Mohammad Mahfud (27.3 percent) and Anies-Muhaimin Iskandar (23.1 percent).