We all knew that the registration of candidates of Jakarta Governor was officially closed and 6 pairs of candidates was registered which comprised of 4 pairs candidates from political parties support path and 2 pairs candidates from individual path. Individual candidates in particular were still hampered by requirement of minimum support (based on ID cards) which resulted in disqualification by early stage of verification and they had to fulfill the minimum support requirement until April 9th.
Actually, the presence of candidates from political party support was quite surprising and almost changed constellation and predictions of the political observers. It was interesting how the Democratic Party finally presented a pair of candidates who previously seemed to clash to win support of political parties, i.e Fauzi Bowo and Nachrowi Ramli as governor and vice governor candidates while one day before the closing, Fauzi Bowo was predicted to move forward with Adang Ruchyatna. This was also conveyed verbally by Anas Urbaningrum, chairman of the Democratic Party.
The question is, why did Fauzi Bowo in the end decide to pick Nachrowi Ramli as his vice governor candidate and sacrifice support from the Social Justice Party (PKS) and Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (PDIP) by refusing candidates proposed by those parties? And apparently, what happened to Fauzi Bowo has forced both PDIP and PKS who cancelled their coalition with the Democratic Party, to push their own best cadres to move forward as governor candidate.
Some sources has confirmed that Fauzi Bowo cancelled his proposal to one of PDIP or PKS’s member because both parties asked for 30 billion IDR as “dowry” and authority to elect certain heads of agencies which eventually rejected by Fauzi Bowo because the amount was too high.
Internal conflict also occurred within PDIP where support for Adang Ruchyatna to become candidate of Fauzi Bowo’s vice governor as mentioned by Taufik Kiemas had been denied by Megawati. Subsequently, supported by Prabowo and Gerindra Party, PDIP finally proposed Joko Widodo as governor candidate with Basuki Tjahaya Purnama (Popularly known as Ahok) as candidate for vice governor. What should be noted is that Ahok is a politician from Party of Functional Groups (Golkar) and also member of the House of Representative electoral commission II Bangka Belitung. On the same day, Ahok declared his resignation from Golkar and joined Gerindra which in turn support him to move forward to accompany Joko Widodo as candidate of vice governor.
This was not surprising since Joko Widodo is deemed successful in managing Solo and he personally is searching for someone who has spotless reputation and accustom to populist programs. Ahok is the person who has those qualities. But the pair is not without weakness i.e. they are not figures who have rooted in Jakarta. Their popularity and electability are purely depended on how they manage to get along with mass media and party machinery. PDIP themselves has solid party machinery in Jakarta but with recent condition in which competition between party machineries becoming fiercer, party machinery must be more solid in conducting campaign for their candidates.
Surprisingly, PKS finally proposed Hidayat Nur Wahid as governor candidate and Didik J Rachbini as vice governor. This action is opposed to the result of national work meeting and observer’s prediction where previously, PKS has unanimously support Triwisaksana for 2012 Jakarta Governor Election although it was not certain yet, whether he will come forward as governor or vice governor candidate. However, within seconds PKS totally changed its political options.
This decision might be caused by two factors, first PKS is way too confident that Fauzi Bowo and Democratic Party will choose them because they received big support from regional parliament (DPRD) and good grass-root militant cadres.
Secondly, there are factions within PKS which actually refuse to be considered as Fauzi Bowo’s cronies since his reputation has already damaged among the middle class and media opinion. These factions must struggle internally to push PKS promoting their own candidate because there is enough support from DPRD and referring to the 2007 Local Government General Election where they were able to counterbalance coalition of big parties. This is reasonable and possible to become a reality since none of the big parties such as PDIP, Democratic Party, Golkar and PKS coalesce. Each party is promoting their own candidates. Thus, this situation is advantageous for PKS.
Choosing Didik J Rachbini as candidate is also considered controversial but reasonable since he is considered as a qualified senior figure in economy, one of National Mandate Party (PAN) official and National Democratic Party (Nasdem) and will likely to receive support from intellectual and academics. Additionally, Didik J Rachbini is also quite popular within social media. In this case, chairman of PAN has declared their willingness to support Didik J Rachbini in the governor election along with Hidayat Nur Wahid since PAN themselves does not promote their own internal cadre, instead they support Fauzi Bowo.
PAN’s decision in particular has compromised their own cadre whose performance is deemed passable as member of Jakarta’s DPRD, i.e. Wanda Hamidah. She actually has formed her own campaign team, i.e. Jakarta Bergerak (Jakarta On The Move) and this team has been working hard to promote Wanda Hamidah as either Jakarta governor or vice governor in the upcoming Jakarta Local Government General Election. But the politically pragmatic decision was taken and passing off Wanda Hamidah and her team’s effort.