Indonesian President Joko Widodo pledged to intensify the fight against corruption through merit-based political appointments in the first presidential debate as his challenger Prabowo Subianto mooted higher pay for bureaucrats to tackle the menace seen as hindering the country’s development. According to Alexander R. Arifianto, a research fellow at RSIS, “Prabowo does have a large number of strong hard-core followers at grassroots level who are quite determined to help him score an upset against Jokowi.”