State Palace Clarifies Prabowo's Remarks on Four Election Defeats

State Secretary Prasetyo Hadi has clarified President Prabowo Subianto’s remarks about losing four presidential elections, explaining that the President intended to highlight the general election as a shared national consensus. “No, not at all. The context he wanted to convey is that the five-yearly election event is our collective consensus,” Pras told reporters after the National Symposium of the 2026 Indonesian Science, Technology, and Industry Convention (KSTI) at JCC, Senayan, Jakarta, on Friday (26/6/2026).

Pras stated that the results of the five-yearly election represent a mutual agreement. Consequently, Prabowo has always accepted whatever the people’s decision was by not disturbing the elected leader. “Yes, when it is something we agree upon as a collective consensus, that is the path he has taken all this time. That is why, if you observe, after he retired or finished serving in the military, before becoming an entrepreneur, he understood that was the consensus,” he said.

Pras then detailed Prabowo’s struggle to seek the people’s mandate, which was carried out according to the mechanism through political channels. This path was pursued from 2004 until he was finally elected president in the 2024 Presidential Election. “In 2004 he fought through the Golkar Party, then in 2008 he founded a party, following all the mechanisms and consensus that had been agreed upon, establishing a political party, running, offering himself to the public to ask for a mandate from the people,” he said.

“Then the first time he was not yet successful, asking for a mandate again and not yet successful, until four times in 2024, he was given the mandate by the people through the electoral and constitutional mechanism,” Pras continued. After being elected, Pras said, Prabowo is striving to repay his long struggle by giving his best to the people. “That is why over these two years he has been working hard to repay the struggle that had not yet been utilised because he did not yet have the mandate to give something better to the people,” he said.

Previously, Prabowo again spoke about his four defeats in presidential elections. Prabowo admitted that despite losing four times, he never disturbed the government that received the mandate. “I always try with persuasion, as a political leader, I was elected democratically, I went to the people five times to ask for a mandate, four times I was not given the mandate, four times I lost, but I did not disturb the leader who got the mandate,” Prabowo said while opening the National Symposium of the 2026 Indonesian Science, Technology, and Industry Convention (KSTI).