JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesian President Joko Widodo launched his re-election campaign on Friday, looking to win over big blocs of millennial and Muslim voters as Southeast Asia’s biggest economy sails into choppy waters.

At next year’s election on April 17, the former furniture salesman seeks to repeat his 2014 defeat of Prabowo Subianto, a retired special forces commander, when Widodo won a narrow victory after a fierce battle.

Now each is pushing a nationalistic economic platform, but issues of race and religion loom large in the battle to run the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, whose reputation for pluralism is threatened by growing conservatism.

“Differences in voting are fine, but don’t forget our unity as a people, as a country,” Widodo told reporters in downtown Jakarta just hours before drawing a number at the election commission to decide his position on the ballot.

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