T

he naming of Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama as a blasphemy suspect may narrow his chances of winning the gubernatorial race, a survey reveals.

The survey, released by the Indonesian Survey Circle (LSI) on Friday, showed that 60 percent of the people who favored him said they would withdraw their support if the police charged him with blasphemy.

The LSI held the survey from Oct. 31 to Nov. 5, before Ahok was declared a suspect, but it asked the 440 respondents whether they would continue to support him if he was eventually named a suspect.

The survey indicates that Ahok’s electability may have plunged to 10.6 percent. If he had been cleared of the blasphemy allegation, his electability would have been around 25 percent.

“Being a suspect gives one a bad public image. Of course, being declared a suspect doesn’t mean a person is guilty, but in the public eye [that person] is [perceived as being] guilty,” LSI researcher Ardian Sopa told reporters when announcing the survey results on Friday.

The National Police named Ahok a suspect on Wednesday after conducting a case screening and questioned scores of experts, including Islamic scholars and linguists.

Even before he was declared a suspect, Ahok’s popularity rating had tumbled in previous months due in part to the negative response to the blasphemy case, the survey showed.

According to the LSI, Ahok’s popularity rating was at 59.3 percent in March. It then dropped to 49.1
percent in July before dropping again to 31.4 percent in October.

This month, before he was named a suspect, his rating was 24.6 percent.

The pollster said previously that besides religious sentiment, other aspects also contributed to the drop in Ahok’s rating, such as his eviction policy, the controversy surrounding reclamation projects in the Jakarta Bay and his straightforward demeanor, which many people considered rude.

The LSI also said the sudden appearance of former middle-ranked military officer Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono and former education minister Anies Baswedan as candidates in the Jakarta gubernatorial election also hurt Ahok’s rating. The two men, according to the LSI, are perceived as fresh candidates.

The latest LSI survey showed that Anies is now in the lead with 31.90 percent, followed by Agus with 30.90 percent in second place.

The number of undecided voters remains high, with 26.60 percent of respondents saying they had not yet made a decision.

“Ahok [and running mate Djarot Sjaiful Hidayat] has the possibility to lose in the first round of the election because the pair now has the lowest [rating] compared to the other two pairs of candidates,” LSI said in a statement.

After being named a blasphemy suspect, some people asked Ahok to withdraw from the political race, but the governor has stressed that he will not give up and has asked his supporters to vote for him on election day.

He said he would rather be jailed than quit the race.

Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPUD) chairman Sumarno has said that Ahok’s suspect status did not disqualify him from the gubernatorial race.