Prabowo Subianto Djojohadikusumo is one of the presidential candidates in the Indonesia Presidential election 2014. He was born in Jakarta on 17 October 1951, is son of renowned economist Sumitro Djojohadikusumo (1917-2001). After high school, Prabowo decided to pursue a military career and enrolled in Indonesia's Military Academy in Magelang (Central Java) between 1970 and 1974. He quickly passed through the ranks of the army and became Commandant of the Special Command Force General (Kopassus) and was later appointed as head of the Army Strategic Reserve Command (Kostrad). However, in the late 1990s the regime of president Suharto, Prabowo's father in law, starting to crumble until its collapse in 1998. Based on witness accounts of Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie (Indonesia's third president) and retired army officer Sintong Panjaitan, Prabowo attempted a (failed) coup when he positioned his army units close to the house of then president Habibie, shortly after the fall of Suharto.

Prabowo is a highly controversial figure in Indonesia. He is regarded as a human rights violator when he was stationed in East Timur to crush the East Timorese independence movement in the early 1990s. Reputedly, Prabowo was also behind the kidnappings and disappearance of various pro-democracy activists in 1998, when many people took the streets of Jakarta and other cities in Indonesia to demand for democracy. His weak reputation in terms of human rights can be used by his political opponents on the road towards the Indonesian presidential elections.

On the day of the announcement of the voting result (22 July 2014), several hours before the announcement, Prabowo said that he decided to withdraw from the race, he claimed that General Election Commission (KPU) is being unfair with him, he said that the result is invalid at the same time Prabowo also mentioned that he will challenge KPU in the court.