Why Indonesia's Vice President Gibran Resigned Over a High-School Diploma

Indonesia's vice president has resigned over a high-school diploma. Gibran Rakabuming Raka, 39, the eldest son of former president Joko Widodo, submitted his resignation to President Prabowo Subianto and to parliament on Thursday — two years into a five-year term, and one day after 120 lawmakers from all eight parties in parliament filed the first formal step towards impeaching him. The question that ended his vice presidency is almost absurdly small: did he actually finish high school? The courts, after a year of litigation, said the document proving it was not valid. Gibran chose to go before parliament could remove him.

The certificate at the centre of it

Gibran completed his schooling in Singapore, where he went on to study for a marketing degree. Indonesian election law requires vice-presidential candidates to have completed senior high school or an equivalent qualification. When he registered his candidacy with the General Elections Commission in 2024, he filed a certificate stating that his overseas education was equivalent to a vocational high school in Indonesia. At the time, nobody questioned it.

The challenge came later, from a lawyer named Subhan Palal, who first sued over the credentials in September 2025. The case worked its way through the courts for over a year. In September 2026, a former law minister and ten other petitioners asked the Constitutional Court to invalidate Gibran's candidacy and inauguration. On October 6, the court rejected that petition for lack of legal standing — but appeared to agree that his documents did not amount to a senior high school-equivalent diploma. Then, on October 30, the Supreme Court accepted Subhan's appeal and invalidated the certificate itself. The court said no evidence had been found to show Gibran held a foreign diploma or certificate that could serve as the basis for an equivalence with a senior high school qualification, and instructed the education ministry to withdraw the document.

Gibran has always rejected the accusation. "If I didn't graduate from high school, then I obviously wouldn't have been able to go to college. I studied up to a bachelor's degree in Singapore," he said. His defenders note that he is not even a defendant in the lawsuit — the Education Ministry is. But the ruling gave his opponents in parliament what they needed: a court finding that the man in the vice president's office had not met the legal requirements to stand for election in the first place.

The impeachment clock that forced his hand

The resignation came fast because the political timetable left him almost no room. On Wednesday, 120 lawmakers from all eight parties in parliament filed a motion of opinion against him — the first formal step towards impeachment, and a rare show of unity across the political spectrum. The motion was set to be approved at a plenary session on Thursday. Hours before that vote, Gibran's aide confirmed he had submitted his resignation letter to President Prabowo. A day earlier, he had vowed to fight the court rulings. He changed his mind overnight, after a meeting with Prabowo on Tuesday in which he stated his intention to resign.

Under Indonesia's constitution, a vice-presidential vacancy does not trigger a new election. Prabowo now has 14 days to submit two names, and parliament will then have two months to choose Gibran's replacement. The vice presidency itself carries few constitutionally defined powers beyond representing the president at official events and taking over if the president is incapacitated — but the resignation still lands hard on a government already facing widespread dissatisfaction over the economy, corruption and wildfires, and scandals around its signature free school meals programme.

A candidacy that was controversial from the first day

The diploma scandal was the second time Gibran's eligibility had been challenged — and the first challenge was, if anything, more controversial. He was 36 when candidate registration opened in 2023, while election law required candidates to be at least 40. On October 16, 2023, the Constitutional Court ruled 5–4 that candidates under 40 could run if they had previously been elected as a regional head. Gibran, elected mayor of Surakarta in 2020, qualified. The court was led at the time by Anwar Usman — Joko Widodo's brother-in-law and Gibran's uncle by marriage — who was later removed as chief justice for failing to recuse himself from the case.

That ruling paved his way to power, and the diploma case has now ended it. Together they tell a single story about Indonesian politics: a dynastic candidacy built on a court decision that bent the rules, undone by a court decision that enforced them. Gibran became the youngest person ever to hold Indonesia's vice presidency. He leaves after two years, with his father's political alliance — the partnership between the Widodo family and Prabowo that won the 2024 election — now openly strained. Whether the split hardens into a genuine opposition, and who Prabowo picks to fill the vacancy, will decide whether this resignation is the end of a scandal or the start of a realignment in Southeast Asia's largest economy.