An electoral officer showing the ballot as they count votes at a polling station after regional elections in Jakarta, Indonesia. - Photo: Reuters
JAKARTA: The opposition party led by Indonesia’s former president Megawati Soekarnoputri on Wednesday (Nov 27) claimed victory in Jakarta’s race for governor in a blow for Indonesia’s new President just a month after he took office.
Independent pollsters such as Indikator Politik Indonesia, Charta Politika and Lembaga Survei Indonesia placed the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle’s candidate, Pramono Anung, ahead of his rivals in the Jakarta race, garnering between 49 per cent and 50 per cent of the votes.
President Prabowo Subianto’s favoured candidate, former West Java governor Ridwan Kamil, trailed behind, with 40 per cent of the votes.
Lies Hartono, who heads Pramono and his running mate Rano Karno’s campaign team, cited multiple polls putting the duo above the 50 per cent needed to avoid a second-round run-off.
“Based on those results, we can declare that the Jakarta election took place in one round,” he said in a news conference broadcast by Kompas TV.
Official results are expected to be announced by Dec 15 at the latest, according to the General Elections Commission regulation.
Pramono and Ridwan are battling for control of a metropolis that accounts for a fifth of the country’s economic output.
Whoever wins will face a range of challenges including traffic congestion, pollution and the fact that the city of more than 11 million people is sinking.
The new governor may even preside over a defining moment in Jakarta’s history, when it relinquishes its duties as Indonesia’s seat of government to a new city being built in the rainforests of Borneo more than 1,200km away.
The role is a career-maker in Indonesia, a stepping stone to becoming the president of the archipelago that spans three time zones and more than 17,000 islands.
The Jakarta contest was the most prominent of local elections taking place in 37 provinces across Indonesia.
It was also one of the first chances for voters to register their level of support for Prabowo after he became Indonesia’s eighth president in late October following a landslide victory in a February election.
Prabowo, who is allied with his predecessor Joko Widodo, is seeking to further consolidate power after forming a coalition government that controls some 80 per cent of national Parliament seats.
“Every election has a winner and loser, so we have to work together,” Prabowo said during the vote on Nov 27. “The winners have to be leaders for all, the losers have to work together.”
The former general has set out ambitious targets ranging from achieving 8 per cent annual growth in the next few years to carrying out a US$30 billion (S$40.32 billion) free lunch programme for schoolchildren.
Controlling the island of Java, which counts Jakarta as its biggest city, is key to the success of those policies, since more than half the country’s population lives there.
If Prabowo’s candidates lose in Jakarta and Central Java, investors may sell Indonesian stocks, according to Lionel Priyadi, a macro strategist at Mega Capital Indonesia, a brokerage based in Jakarta.
Defeats could “make the implementation of Prabowo’s programmes more complicated because of stronger political resistance”, Priyadi said.
Foreign investors pulled about US$1.5 billion from the Indonesian stock and bond markets after Donald Trump won the US election on a campaign that included a vow to impose blanket tariffs.
The rupiah has fallen about 1.5 per cent against the dollar in November, while the benchmark Jakarta Composite Index of shares has lost roughly 4 per cent.
Prabowo’s predecessor, Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, was Jakarta governor for two years before he became president in 2014.
Widodo then sought to shift the capital to Borneo and rename it Nusantara, as part of his legacy and to redistribute wealth across the sprawling archipelago.
But the multi-billion-dollar project remains a work in progress, with most transport links and buildings far from complete.
Prabowo has pledged to see the project through, saying he wants key facilities in Nusantara to be finished in the next four years.
In the past few weeks, the Jakarta governor candidates have been presenting their visions for the megacity that remains an economic powerhouse in South-east Asia.
Prabowo’s candidate, Ridwan, has promised to cut red tape to attract investors, build a Disneyland off Jakarta’s coast and continue with land reclamation projects.
Pramono has vowed to invest in training Jakarta’s workforce, start a US$3 billion fund to finance projects in the city and push ahead with plans to construct a giant sea wall.
“The systems in Jakarta are already running, but whoever wins, the challenge is to improve the quality,” said D. Nicky Fahrizal, a researcher at the Jakarta-based think-tank the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
“Jakarta can be as busy as New York, but will it be comfortable? Or will Jakarta have clean air like Singapore?” - Bloomberg
