Pramono Anung (right), seen here with President Joko Widodo, is to register as the PDI-P candidate for Jakarta governor. - Antara
JAKARTA: Indonesia’s largest party unexpectedly named President Joko Widodo’s cabinet secretary as its candidate in November’s Jakarta gubernatorial election, ending speculation that the party would back the president’s top critic.
Pramono Anung, 61, is registering as the PDI-P candidate for Jakarta governor with the election commission on Wednesday (Aug 28), he said on KompasTV. Paired with an actor-turned-politician, he will face Ridwan Kamil, a former regional governor who was nominated by Jokowi’s governing coalition and incoming President Prabowo Subianto, plus an independent candidate.
The winner will control Indonesia’s business centre, which contributes nearly a fifth of the nation’s gross domestic product and the bulk of its finance. The Jakarta governorship is seen as one of the most important political roles in Indonesia, with some using it as a launchpad to contest the presidency. Jokowi was former governor of the capital from 2012 before stepping down in 2014 to run in that year’s presidential elections.
Anung is a senior member of the PDI-P, or Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, and a former deputy speaker of parliament who spent almost a decade beside Jokowi as cabinet secretary. His nomination may be a gamble for the party, as it’s backing a newcomer who has not been tested as a regional leader, said D. Nicky Fahrizal, a researcher at the Jakarta-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Anung has experience as a manager both within the PDI-P and government, party spokesperson Chico Hakim said before formal registration.
The PDI-P, which is the largest bloc in a parliament where no party has an outright majority, was finally able to nominate its candidate after protesters last week blocked electoral law changes pushed by government-supporting parties. Those amendments would have effectively forced it into a coalition with others to back a candidate for governor.
There had been widespread talk that former Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan, a prominent critic of Jokowi, would be the party’s candidate. He now has little chance of running for the position, a post he held from 2017 until 2022, before he ran in this year’s presidential election. - Bloomberg
