Jakarta Globe, Kanupriya Kapoor & Anastasia Arvirianty, May 18, 2014
Indonesia’s presidential race isn’t until July. But there’s already one winner.
Jakarta Deputy Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama. (JG Photo/ Afriadi Hikmal) |
Indonesia’s presidential race isn’t until July. But there’s already one winner.
Basuki
Tjahaja Purnama has taken over as acting governor of Jakarta, the first ethnic
Chinese to do so.
A
Christian, Basuki succeeds Joko Widodo who has stepped aside to run for the
presidential election on July 9, which opinion polls suggest he will win.
Basuki will automatically take over to complete Joko’s five-year term if he
does win.
Indonesia’s
Chinese make up only about 2 percent of the 240 million population.
Resented
for their wide control over trade and business, and suspected of loyalty to
China, Indonesian-Chinese have been deliberately kept out of the political and
military hierarchy for most of the country’s almost 70 years of independence.
The
resentment, which has burst into bloody riots in the past, appears to be on the
wane, although it’s not over.
Even
critics of Jakarta’s acting governor complain mostly about what they see as his
abrasive style of governance, not his background.
“People are
voting for a track record today,” Basuki told Reuters in an interview in his
office in April. “It’s not about the race or religion…or some primordial idea
of who should run [the country].”
Bad cop
Basuki has
been the bad cop to Joko’s good cop. In contrast to the typically soft-spoken
and Javanese Joko, Basuki has gained a reputation for being a tough guy not
afraid to shake up the city’s sleepy bureaucracy.
“The first
thing we have to fix here is the bureaucracy…by testing and evaluating their
performance,” Basuki said.
“We say to
them if they don’t want to follow us, they can get out. Sometimes we have to
kick them out. Of course they are angry but we don’t care.”
Basuki, 48,
has served as Joko’s right-hand man since winning the 2012 Jakarta
gubernatorial election when the pair toppled the incumbent with their can-do,
transparent ideas on fixing the many problems of the chaotic city, including
chronic traffic and flooding.
“I
personally don’t agree [with Basuki becoming governor] because he’s too
temperamental,” city councilor Boy Bernardi Sadikin told media.
Sadikin is
the son of a former Jakarta governor from the 1970s, who many residents believe
was the last popular and effective leader the city saw before Joko and Basuki.
Videos of
Basuki losing his temper with inefficient bureaucrats have gone viral in
Indonesia but the public has been largely supportive of the acting governor’s
no-nonsense style in a country bedeviled by corruption and bureaucratic
inertia.
When
running in the 2012 Jakarta election, Basuki, who is from the resource-rich
Bangka Belitung province, faced smear campaigns from rivals.
But the at
times blatant racist attacks had little effect and Jakarta residents voted in
favor of Joko and Basuki with a 55 percent majority.
Indonesia,
the world’s third largest democracy, has a history of communal tensions that
have at times boiled over into violent attacks specifically targeting the
ethnic Chinese minority.
The country
saw one of the most horrific attacks on the Chinese community in 1998 as
Indonesia descended into political and economic chaos following the Asian
financial crisis. Rampaging mobs targeted Chinese-owned businesses and in some
cases killed and raped Chinese-Indonesians, forcing hundreds to flee the country.
Hardline
Muslim groups, who last year protested the appointment of a Christian woman to
a Jakarta district office, have also threatened to protest Basuki’s rise to
power.
But Basuki
believes Indonesia is becoming more pluralist.
“The
Jakarta election was a test and…we see more ethnic Chinese running for [public
office] now,” Basuki said. “One day soon Indonesia will be ready for a
non-Muslim or ethnic Chinese leader, even president.”
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