There was a moment late on Wednesday night when Prabowo Subi­anto looked for all the world like the defender of a fragile election win against the massed forces of counting fraud, opportunism and potential civil unrest.

In his lily-white uniform reminiscent of Indonesia’s great populist president Sukarno, and speaking passionately from the floor of a Jakarta television studio, the man who has come second in a disputed election would have been drawing on his full reserve of a sense of entitlement to Indonesia’s top job: ancestors who fought the Dutch, a father who was on the losing side of a revolt against the chaotic Sukarno regime, and his own failure for not getting the expected payoff for helping to keep the subsequent Suharto regime in power.

“We want to become a people who abide by the essence of democracy; that’s why we must respect each other,” the former general turned politician appealed over airwaves on one of Indonesia’s main media outlets.

… “Nothing will be settled between now and the end of July,” says Leonard Sebastian of Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. “A margin of 5 per cent or below in problematic.”