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Photo: Prabowo Subianto with Indonesia's President-elect Joko Widodo. (Reuters) |
Hundreds of thousands of Indonesians in the city of Makassar headed to local election polls to cast a blank vote rather than elect the only pair of candidates from the same coalition, according to quick count surveys.
Key points:
- Votes swung strongly towards Mr Jokowi in West Java
- More than half of Indonesian voters take into account the candidate's religious background
- Jokowi's political opponents had leveraged the feeling of isolation among conservative Muslim voters
And it's not the only city where this has happened — voters in 13 other regions also voluntarily gave up their time to cast a blank vote to protest against the political and economic elites who nominate the candidates.
"It was quite a slap in the face to the establishment … people are very much more focused on the candidate rather than the party," said Tim Evans from governance organisation Kemitraan, an expert on Asian elections.
It's good news for a populist style President like Joko "Jokowi" Widodo who is seen as an outsider to the establishment.[Voters' loyalty] to parties is quite rare here, people can switch parties quite easily — often what we see are people looking at performers."
However, he faces a serious challenge as he attempts to deal with policies that could give conservative Muslims reason to turn against him.
This was demonstrated by his reluctance to apply a proposed presidential decree, known as "Perppu", to ban child marriages, and in his anti-leftist rhetoric when he denounced the PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia).