The campaign team for presidential candidate Anies Baswedan and his running mate Muhaimin Iskandar has said the pair would commit to simplifying provisions for obtaining permits to build places of worship and prevent interreligious strife if elected next year.

Usamah Abdul Aziz, a spokesman for the campaign team, said that Anies and Muhaimin clearly affirmed social justice and prosperity as their primary vision for leading the country, and that the ease of obtaining a permit to construct new places of worship is the right of all citizens.

“We’ve had a track record [of relaxing permits for this purpose] in Jakarta. We will simplify all processes to build places of worship,” said Usamah in Jakarta.

He said they would take a page out of Anies’ playbook as former governor of Jakarta, which saw the administration provide crematoriums for Hindu worshippers residing in the capital, adding to the many sites of prayer in a city home to a melting pot of different religious beliefs.

Usamah said the candidate pair would also take serious steps to safeguard religious harmony across Indonesia, which has ebbed and flowed over the past few years.

"Everything good that has been done [under Anies] in Jakarta will be replicated on a national scale,” he said, as quoted by state news agency Antara.

The issue of religious division and intolerance continues to debilitate socially conservative and majority-Muslim Indonesia, as minority groups often face difficulties in building places of worship out of discrimination and misplaced fear of the new place of worship leading people astray.

Despite constitutional protection in constructing places of worship, religious minorities, including those from officially recognized belief systems, continue to face resistance from local populations.

The Religious Affairs Ministry attempted to remedy the situation by proposing simplified provisions earlier in June. At the time, Religious Affairs Minister Yaqut Cholil Qoumas suggested that permits could be obtained with just a recommendation from the ministry, as opposed to previous rules requiring one from the Religious Harmony Forum (FKUB) as well.

However, the plan drew criticism from the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), which argued that this change would draw more ire and resistance from locals.

“When riots and violence break out because of a new ministerial regulation, who do we blame; the locals or the minister?” MUI vice chairman Anwar Abbas told local media on June 7.

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