Prabowo Pick Trails in Jakarta Governor Race in Blow for Leader
(Bloomberg) -- Prabowo Subianto’s favored candidate is trailing behind the opposition pick in Jakarta’s governor election in a potential blow for Indonesia’s new president though there’s a chance the contest may still go to a runoff.
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Unofficial counts showed the opposition candidate, former cabinet secretary Pramono Anung, leading with 49.5%-50.1% of the vote, followed by Prabowo’s pick, former West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil with 39.3%-40%. There’s a 0.8%-2% margin of error and one of the pollsters said it was hard to tell if a winner could be determined in the first round.
A winning candidate needs to get more than 50% of the vote. Pramono’s campaign claimed victory but his rival Ridwan said he would wait for the official results. The Election Commission has to decide whether a second round is required to determine who gains control of a metropolis that accounts for a fifth of the country’s economic output.
Whoever eventually wins will face a range of challenges including traffic congestion, pollution and the fact that the city of more than 11 million people is sinking. The new governor may even preside over a defining moment in Jakarta’s history, when it relinquishes its duties as Indonesia’s seat of government to a new city being built in the rainforests of Borneo more than 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) away.
The role is a career-maker in Indonesia, a stepping stone to becoming the president of the archipelago that spans three time zones and more than 17,000 islands.
The Jakarta contest was the most prominent of local elections taking place in 37 provinces across Indonesia. A date for the runoff may be scheduled after the results are made official next month, according to an election commission official.
It was also one of the first chances for voters to register their level of support for Prabowo after he became Indonesia’s eighth president in late October following a landslide victory in a February election. Prabowo, who’s allied with his predecessor, Joko Widodo, is seeking to further consolidate power after forming a coalition government that controls some 80% of national parliament seats.
“Every election has a winner and loser, so we have to work together,” Prabowo said during the vote on Wednesday. “The winners have to be leaders for all, the losers have to work together.”
The former general has set out ambitious targets ranging from achieving 8% annual growth in the next few years to carrying out a $30 billion free lunch program for schoolchildren.
Controlling the island of Java, which counts Jakarta as its biggest city, is key to the success of those policies since more than half the country’s population lives there.
If Prabowo’s candidates lose in Jakarta and Central Java, investors may sell Indonesian stocks, according to Lionel Priyadi, a macro strategist at Mega Capital Indonesia, a brokerage based in Jakarta.
Defeats could “make the implementation of Prabowo’s programs more complicated because of stronger political resistance,” Priyadi said.
Foreign investors pulled about $1.5 billion from the Indonesian stock and bond markets after Donald Trump won the US election on a campaign that included a vow to impose blanket tariffs. The rupiah has fallen about 1.5% against the dollar this month, while the benchmark Jakarta Composite Index of shares has lost roughly 4%.
Prabowo’s predecessor, Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, was Jakarta governor for two years before he became president in 2014.
Jokowi then sought to shift the capital to Borneo and rename it Nusantara, as part of his legacy and to redistribute wealth across the sprawling archipelago. But the multibillion dollar project remains a work in progress, with most transport links and buildings far from complete. Prabowo has pledged to see the project through, saying he wants key facilities in Nusantara to be finished in the next four years.
In the past few weeks, the Jakarta governor candidates have been presenting their visions for the megacity that remains an economic powerhouse in Southeast Asia.
“The systems in Jakarta are already running, but whoever wins, the challenge is to improve the quality,” said D. Nicky Fahrizal, a researcher at the Jakarta-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Jakarta can be as busy as New York but will it be comfortable? Or will Jakarta have clean air like Singapore?”
Prabowo’s candidate, Ridwan, has promised to cut red tape to attract investors, build a Disneyland off Jakarta’s coast and continue with land reclamation projects.
Pramono, who’s backed by the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, has vowed to invest in training Jakarta’s workforce, start a $3 billion fund to finance projects in the city and push ahead with plans to construct a giant sea wall.
“If the numbers now show that we are number one, all the hard work has paid off,” Pramono said after the vote. “This election has been peaceful and joyful, and hopefully this is a positive for our economy.”
--With assistance from Norman Harsono, Cecilia Yap and Claire Jiao.
(Updates throughout)
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