Clouded by allegations of blasphemy, phone tapping and
even murder, the Jakarta gubernatorial race will be decided after another round
of voting on April 19
Jakarta’s gubernatorial
race is going to a second round nail-biter after ethnic-Chinese Christian
governor Basuki Purnama narrowly edged former education minister Anies Baswaden
in a February 15 election clouded by allegations of blasphemy, phone tapping
and even murder.
Quick
count results, with nearly all the ballots counted, showed Purnama winning 43%
of the vote, ahead of Baswaden who notched 39% and third-placed Agus Haritmurti
Yudhoyono trailing with 17% after he faded badly in the final stretch. A
candidate needed to receive 50% of the vote to win the race outright. The next
round of voting is set for April 19.
An
academic and educator, Baswaden made significant gains from Yudhoyono, son of
former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, during the final two weeks, showing
conservative Muslim voters had already begun to consolidate around a single
candidate.
That is
not good news for Purnama going into the deciding second round. Analysts said
he needed up to a 10% buffer, but predictions are premature at this stage over
just how much the governor’s ongoing blasphemy trial – and the possible verdict
— will weigh on the final outcome.
Polls
taken before the second round of the 2012 gubernatorial election, in which
current President Joko Widodo and running mate Purnama won easily over an
incumbent who resorted to blatant primordial tactics were some way off the
mark. But Widodo is a Muslim and the circumstances are vastly different in
2017.
Far more
accurate and favorable to the Widodo-Purnama ticket then was a different
algorithm-type poll taken on social media which allowed tech-savvy middle class
voters a bigger influence than they have in conventional surveys that are
routinely conducted in the capital’s high-density housing areas.
Religion may
have been a major factor in the hardline Islamic enclaves of Tebet, Mampang and
Pancoran, but not so in other residential areas of the capital like southern
Cilandak where, as one veiled Muslim housewife put it: “Better the governor we
know than the one we don’t. At last we know what he’s done.”
A few
doors away from her polling station was the home of Yenny Wahid, daughter of
ex-president Abdurrahman Wahid, the great pluralist whose death
seven years ago has left secularist forces without an obvious leader as
Islam and populism come together in a potent new mix.
Purnama
has only himself to blame for some of his troubles. After recovering strongly
from the initial blasphemy charge, which drew huge crowds of protestors in
November and December, he lost ground again recently with an ill-advised attack
on Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) chairman Ma’ruf Amin.
Purnama’s
off-the-cuff remarks have gotten him into trouble before, but this time he was
upset at evidence suggesting that Yudhoyono and Amin, a cleric with a long
history of draconian edicts, had been conspiring over the blasphemy case, which
stems from the content of a campaign speech the governor made last October.
The
damage he did with that latest outburst was reflected in the 300,000 people who
flocked to Jakarta’s Istiqial Mosque for February 10 Friday prayers,
where clerics defied police instructions and told them not to vote for a
non-Muslim candidate.
Many
attendees were non-voters from outside Jakarta, but it had been assumed a
succession of lawsuits dumped on radical Islamic Defenders Front (MUI) leader
Rizieq Shihab would have had an impact. Clearly it didn’t, although Yudhoyono’s
alleged plotting has not helped either himself or his son’s campaign.
With the
stakes so much higher, a lot can still happen in the next two months, including
the threat of racial or religious violence. Purnama can win back votes by
staying well away from religion, something Baswaden is not doing to the
disappointment of those who previously saw him as a sectarian reformer.
Plucked
from a career in the military, Agus Yudhoyono, 38, had followed his father’s
strategy of pandering to the conservative Muslim lobby. But when Baswaden
changed tack and started eating into that constituency, Agus’ inexperience
showed — particularly during the television debates.
Australian
National University (ANU) political analyst Marcus Mietzner, who has closely
followed the campaign on the ground, says Agus is much better on the stump and
that Yudhoyono Senior erred in not seeing his son’s attraction to the younger
voting block.
The
former president hasn’t helped his own image as a distinguished elder statesman
either by getting into an embarrassing pickle over his assumption that a
reference during Purnama’s trial to a conversation he had with Amin showed his
phone was being tapped.
Demanding
an investigation and a meeting with Widodo, he even likened the case to
Watergate and former US president Richard Nixon’s impeachment. Defense lawyers
produced no transcript and no tape, suggesting it was either a bluff or their
information had come from a tip off.
Since
then, Yudhoyono has also got himself into a potentially more damaging fight
with former Anti-Corruption Commission (KPK) head Azahari Azar, who claims he
was framed on a murder-for-hire charge in 2010, only two months after he
prosecuted Yudhoyono’s father-in-law for corruption.
Widodo
last month granted Azar clemency and commuted the remainder of his 18-year
sentence; one of the ex-prisoner’s first acts was to pointedly take a front row
seat at the second of three televised debates among the gubernatorial
candidates.
As chairman
of the Democrat Party, Yudhoyono’s last-minute decision to recruit Agus for the
gubernatorial race demonstrated a lack of confidence in his younger son, Edhie
Baskoro, 36, the party’s parliamentary leader who previously served for five
years as Democrat secretary-general.
Edhie was
fortunate to escape being caught up in the $200 million Hambalang sports
complex scandal in 2013, which led to then-party chairman Anas
Urbaningrum, sports minister Andi Mallarangeng and two other party officials
being jailed for corruption.
Although
Edhie was re-elected by a landslide in his father’s hometown constituency of
Pacitan on the southeast coast of Java in the 2014 legislative elections,
analysts say Hambalang appears to have put a permanent blight on his career – and
on his father’s ambition of creating a political dynasty.
John
McBeth
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