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fter months of listening to dozens of prosecution witnesses throwing mud at him, incumbent Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama got his chance to argue his innocence in the blasphemy case against him by presenting three defense witnesses in the 13th hearing of his trial on Tuesday.

Ahok presented Eko Cahyono, his running mate in the 2007 Bangka Belitung gubernatorial election, Bambang Waluyo Djojohadikusumo, a Golkar Party member who heard Ahok’s remarks related to Surah Al Maidah 51 in Thousand Islands regency and Analta Amier, his Muslim godbrother. Analta, however, did not testify as it was revealed in the hearing that he had attended a previous hearing.

Eko, who appeared as the first witness, told the judges that Ahok had struggled to deal with religious and racial issues since he ran as a Bangka Belitung gubernatorial candidate in 2007.

Eko said when they ran together in the Bangka Belitung election, many people used religious issues to attack Ahok and that maneuver worked out on voting day and contributed to their failure.

“In sermons during Friday prayers in Bangka Belitung, religious leaders prohibited people for voting for a non-Muslim leader. Pamphlets encouraging people not to choose a non-Muslim were distributed. However, I don’t know which parties were responsible for spreading them,” Eko told the panel of judges.

The same ploy was used to hurt Ahok’s chances of winning the Jakarta election, Eko said.

Eko also presented a interpretation of Surah Al Maidah 51 that was different from the explanation conveyed by the previous prosecution witnesses, citing a statement from Indonesia’s fourth president and the chief patron of the National Awakening Party (PKB), Abdurrahman Wahid, popularly known as “Gus Dur”.

In 2007, Gus Dur campaigned for the pair and said religious matters should not be brought into gubernatorial elections as Surah Al Maidah referred to religious leaders, not administration leaders.

The other witness, Bambang, convinced the judges that none of the Thousand Islands residents had expressed anger at Ahok’s speech.

“The residents laughed when they heard [Ahok] cite the Quranic verse,” Bambang told the judges.

Meanwhile, Analta failed to defend the man he called his “younger brother” as the prosecutors revealed that he had attended a previous hearing, though such attendance is prohibited for a witness. Analta admitted he had once attended an earlier hearing, during which the court heard testimony from witnesses presented by prosecutors.

“As the witness has heard testimony from other witnesses, the judges believe this witness cannot be questioned,” presiding judge Dwiarso Budi Santiarto said.

He added that Ahok’s lawyers were allowed to present another witness to replace Analta.