Indonesian Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka has resigned after the country’s two highest courts ruled that the documents he submitted about his overseas education did not satisfy election requirements.
Gibran, 39, submitted his resignation to President Prabowo Subianto and to parliament on Thursday, Al Jazeera reported. He leaves two years into a five-year term.
The qualifications dispute
Both the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court found that the paperwork Gibran filed covering his schooling abroad fell short of what election rules require. Critics have gone further, alleging he never received a high school diploma at all.
Al Jazeera reports that he attended secondary school in Singapore and then in Australia, before returning to Singapore to take a bachelor’s degree in management.
Hiru News reported that he is the first Indonesian vice president to leave office before the end of a term since the country’s democratic reforms began in 1998. That claim appears only in the Hiru filing and is attributed to it here.
Political context
Gibran is the eldest son of Joko Widodo, Prabowo’s predecessor as president. His candidacy was contentious from the outset: he became eligible to stand for the vice presidency only after a Constitutional Court ruling, and in 2023 a senior judge was demoted over that decision.
Al Jazeera frames the resignation as added pressure on a government already facing broad public dissatisfaction over the economy, corruption and wildfires. It follows a separate wiretapping investigation that has widened in recent weeks.
Not reported
Neither filing says who will succeed Gibran or how the vacancy will be filled, whether he faces any further legal consequence over the documents, or what President Prabowo said in response. Neither reports a statement from Gibran himself explaining the decision.
