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SURAKARTA, Indonesia (Reuters): Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s son, who faces a dark rival, is expected to win next month’s election for the post his father once held as mayor of Surakarta.
The political aspirations of his eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, have raised suspicions that the president, known as Jokowi, is forming a new dynasty to make his way among the old elites of Indonesia.
Unrelated to the powerful families that have dominated government, business and the military in Southeast Asia’s largest nation, Jokowi was considered an outsider when he was elected in 2014.
For six years in power, Jokowi has prioritized infrastructure and development projects, but some cronies from the Suharto era remain powerful more than two decades after Indonesia’s democratic reform.
Jokowi rejects the idea that his son’s entry into politics shows that a new dynasty is about to join the club.
“Everyone in Indonesia has political rights. I never led my children,” Jokowi told Reuters last week. “It’s a competition. You can win or you can lose.”
Gibran is among a host of newcomers to politics with influential relatives in the world’s third-largest democracy, and analysts say Indonesia’s politics is increasingly becoming a family affair.
Compared to the 2015 regional elections, when there were 52 ‘dynastic’ candidates, this year there are 146, according to research by Yoes Kenawas, a political science doctoral candidate at Northwestern University in Illinois.
Among them are not only the son of the president, but his son-in-law, the daughter of the vice president and the niece of the defense minister. In a constituency on the outskirts of the capital Jakarta, three candidates are dynastic.
“Democracy is only making it easier for some people to come to power,” said Titi Anggraini of the elections regulator Perludem, lamenting the trend.
Indonesian politics has long been dominated by the kings of Java, the most populous island on the planet and home to the capital of the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation.
But in the Javanese hometown of the president of Surakarta, a city better known as Solo, about 500 kilometers (310 miles) from Jakarta, Gibran’s candidacy has generated its own special controversy.
Halim HD, a 69-year-old Panama hat activist, has long been a thorn in the side of well-connected politicians.
Two years ago, when a relative of the then vice president ran unopposed in an election in Sulawesi, Halim launched an ’empty box’ campaign – a push to vote for the blank box that appears on the ballot papers in non-polls. disputed.
The empty box won.
This year, when the president’s son appeared, backed by a coalition of 9 political parties, he also had no opponent, Halim revived the campaign.
“In the context of modern politics,” he said, “these empty boxes are a sign that something is wrong.”
In the end, just hours before registration closed on September 6, a rival candidate emerged.
Bagyo Wahyono, a 59-year-old tailor, had given provisional notice last year of his intention to run, the local electoral commission said, but the late confirmation of his candidacy still surprised many people.
Sugeng Riyanto, vice speaker of the Solo parliament, said he believed, based on the information he had received, that he had been pressured not to have an empty box for fear of optics, especially if he received many votes.
“That would be tremendously embarrassing, not only for Gibran but also for the president,” said Sugeng, a member of the only political party that does not support Jokowi’s son.
He said he believed Bagyo’s candidacy was “to avoid that scenario.” Bagyo denied it. Neither the Gibran campaign nor the presidency responded to requests for comment on the indictment.
Bagyo, who describes himself as an anti-establishment candidate, is backed by a little-known social organization called Tikus Pithi Hanata Baris.
“I ran for my ability to break the system, [to show] anyone can choose and be elected, ”Bagyo told Reuters.
Even for an independent, some observers find Bagyo’s candidacy strange, as he lacks strong social or political capital with any mass organization or political network.
“This candidate in Solo seems to have come out of nowhere,” said Wawan Mas’udi, a political scientist at Gadjah Mada University.
To qualify as an independent Bagyo it was required to collect almost 36,000 signatures.
A spokesman for Bagyo’s campaign team, Budi Yuwono, said they began collecting door-to-door IDs in early 2019. The team initially avoided social media, he said, because they were concerned that political parties might try to obstruct their campaign.
He also seemed to have avoided attention. Few people Reuters spoke to in Solo said they had heard of Bagyo until September, when he registered his candidacy, launched a campaign website and activated social media pages.
Reuters spoke to people on the list of signatories who denied backing Bagyo’s offer.
Legal assistant Tresno Subagyo, for example, was among those surprised to find an electoral official at his door checking that he had registered.
“I never gave my support to Bagyo,” he said, “nor did I hand over my identification.”
Johan Syafaat Mahanani, from a community election monitoring group, said there were dozens of such cases.
“They were normal people, afraid to report it to the authorities,” he said.
Another resident told Reuters that two people had visited his home and taken a photo of his identification, just to explain why later.
“They came simply to make sure Bagyo could get away,” he said, adding that at least seven neighbors had similar encounters.
Gibran’s campaign team did not respond to questions about the authenticity of Bagyo’s support.
Bagyo’s campaign team said there might have been “one or two” errors in collecting signatures, but they did not number in the thousands.
A local election commissioner, Suryo Baruno, said 14,000 names listed for Bagyo were deemed ineligible after two rounds of verification. Subsequently, the campaign sought additional signatories to reach its goal.
An independent election watchdog later said it investigated a report on the fraudulent use of IDs and found no wrongdoing.
The lone parliamentary vice president, Sugeng Riyanto, said he believed that what happened was “a stain on democracy.”
When Gibran registered his candidacy, riding a vintage bicycle to the electoral commission, he conjured up an image of his father, who did the same when he presented his candidacy for the presidency.
Faced with accusations that he is perpetuating Indonesia’s dynastic politics, Gibran told Reuters he “welcomes all criticism” and believes it could make a positive difference in the lives of more people as mayor than as businessman.
A Kompas poll in August showed nearly 61% of those surveyed disliked dynastic politics, but in Solo, a city famous for its aging palace and traditional batik, voters were pragmatic.
“There have been political dynasties for generations,” shrugged Hartanto, a 42-year-old taxi driver, “The important thing is that they know their people.” – The Jakarta Post / Asia News Network
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