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Ahok gathers half a million supporter IDs for gubernatorial campaign
Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama gives a speech during his visit to Cathedral Church in Jakarta on Thursday
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Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama gives a speech during his visit to Cathedral Church in Jakarta on Thursday. Ahok wished a Merry Christmas to all Christians celebrating the holiday during his visit to the Christmas mass in the capital. (Antara/Wahyu Putro) (Antara/Wahyu Putro)
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span class="inline inline-center">Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama gives a speech during his visit to Cathedral Church in Jakarta on Thursday. Ahok wished a Merry Christmas to all Christians celebrating the holiday during his visit to the Christmas mass in the capital. (Antara/Wahyu Putro)
The road for Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama to the 2017 gubernatorial race is open, as his campaign team has gathered the minimum number of IDs from Jakarta residents backing him as an independent contender.
Teman Ahok (Friends of Ahok), a group that gathers support for Ahok to run as an independent candidate, gathered 533,374 IDs as of Dec. 25, surpassing the requirement of 532,000 IDs.
Singgih Widyastomo, one of the founders of Teman Ahok, said on Friday that the group had dedicated the achievement as a Christmas present for Ahok.
"This present makes us happy. But for us, volunteers, the fight is still a long one. We have only gathered half of a million, the minimum figure Ahok said would encourage him to run [for governor]," he said as quoted by the group's official website temanahok.com.
Singgih urged all of the members of the group to work hard as the Jakarta General Election Commission (KPU) would verify all the IDs. He expressed his concerns of IDs that would be scrapped by the KPU that could possibly leave Ahok out of the race, considering he had no political backing.
"The number of IDs verified could be less than what we will submit. Therefore, we must work hard to reach the goal to secure [Ahok's candidacy]," he said.
Ahok had said previously that he would run for a second term in Jakarta's 2017 gubernatorial race if he collected at least 1 million of IDs that supported him as an independent candidate.
In the 2012 race, Ahok had left the Golkar party and joined Gerindra to run successfully as deputy governor, with then-Surakarta mayor Joko "Jokowi" Widodo as governor candidate. Following Jokowi's inauguration as President, Ahok stepped down from Gerindra in 2014 and declared that he would run independently in the 2017 gubernatorial elections.
In a September verdict, the Constitutional Court's determined that independent candidates had to prove they were backed by at least 7.5 percent of the people on the final voter list (DPT) of the previous general election. With 7,096,168 Jakartans listed on the DPT in the 2014 general election, that means an independent contender needs to get at least 532,000 declarations of support, which in turn requires a photocopy of each backer's ID. (anh/rin)
