Fauzi Bowo still most recognizable candidate: Survey

Governor Fauzi Bowo is the most recognizable candidate for next year’s gubernatorial election. He was recognized by 97.5 percent of respondents in an opinion poll conducted by two polling organizations: Median Survei Nasional and The Future Institute.

Television host-turned-politician Tantowi Yahya was the second-most popular candidate with 91.5 percent, while Deputy Governor Prijanto was in third position with 66.5 percent, the poll found.

Triwisaksana, chairman of the Jakarta branch of the Islam-based Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), was in fourth place with 37.4 percent vote and noted economist Faisal Basri, who is again running for the gubernatorial post as an independent candidate, came in at fifth place with 36.8 percent.

The two polling organizations jointly conducted the survey from Sept. 19 to 25 with a sample of 845 respondents in a multistage random sampling.

The pollsters held direct interviews with respondents in the survey. The margin of error in the survey is 3.5 percent.

The survey confirmed the findings of another survey conducted in May by the Jakarta branch of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which predicted that Fauzi would be the strongest candidate in the 2012 gubernatorial election.

In the May survey, Fauzi got 28.3 percent support from a total of 1,436 respondents.

Rico Marbun, executive director of Median Survei Nasional, however said that Fauzi’s acceptability was somewhat lower than that of his rivals.

Tantowi achieved the highest rate of acceptability with 79.8 percent, while Fauzi only managed 54.7 percent.

“In terms of acceptability Fauzi is even lower than Triwisaksana, who comes in at second place with 73.3 percent,” Rico said.

The Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPUD) has said balloting for next year’s gubernatorial elections would take place on July 11. Major political parties have also started promoting their candidates for the election.

The Democratic Party has touted Nachrowi Ramli as its candidate, while the PKS will likely nominate Triwisaksana, who is currently a deputy speaker of the Jakarta Council.

The Golkar party has put forward the chairman of the party’s Jakarta chapter, Prya Ramadhani, along with senior official Aziz Syamsuddin.

The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle has named former chief of the presidential palace guard Lt. Gen. Nono Sampono as candidate in the poll.

Political analyst from the University of Indonesia, Ibramsyah, said on Monday that Fauzi’s popularity was unsurprising.

“He has after all been the city governor for four years now. It is to be expected that the public would recognize him,” Ibramsyah told The Jakarta Post.

However, Fauzi’s position was not safe considering his low level of acceptability.

“Four years into his first term, the governor has yet to make any significant changes. Traffic congestion is still a big problem, budget spending is a mess but other candidates also performed poorly in this acceptability issue,” he said.