Teman Ahok has acquired enough voter IDs for Ahok to run as independent, but he won’t count out political party run

Although Jakarta’s next governor’s race is not until 2017, people have already been working to position their favored candidates for quite a while, perhaps none working harder than the members of the group Teman Ahok (Friends of Ahok). Since last June, the group has been pushing for current Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama to run as an independent candidate in 2017.

The group is aiming to collect one million voter IDs in total. But actually, thanks to a recent ruling by the Constitutional Court, Ahok only needs to get the IDs of 7.5% of the people on Jakarta’s total permanent voter list. That number has been calculated to be about 525,000 voters.

Teman Ahok recently crossed that threshold. According to its website, the group has already collected 587,430 voter IDs. 

One might have expected Ahok to be overjoyed about this news and immediately announce his plans for an independent run. Instead, Ahok has responded to it with measured optimism, stating his respect for Teman Ahok’s efforts but not still not counting out a possible run with a political party.

Ahok acknowledged how hard Teman Ahok has worked, and how much harder they would have to work to reach their goal of 1 million voter IDs. He said that if they did indeed reach one million, then he would almost certainly run as an independent.

“You’ve gotta respect that, I’d move forward as an independent if they collect 1 million ID cards,” he said as quoted by Tempo.

But he still did not dismiss the possibility of accepting the support of a political party, saying, “If there is a party that wants to support me then please, go ahead and let’s see.”

While it’s no doubt disappointing to many of his supporters that Ahok isn’t yet ready to commit to running as an independent, the governor is definitely a pragmatic politician and knows that it ultimately might be more strategic for him to run with a party if he really wants to win in 2017. We hope he knows what he’s doing.



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