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Councillors rush to select new partner for Anies
Jakarta City Councillors are rushing to proceed with the selection of the new deputy governor before their terms end in August
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Jakarta City Councillors are rushing to proceed with the selection of the new deputy governor before their terms end in August.
The new councillors for the 2019-2022 term will be inaugurated this August, leaving the current councillors two months to select a replacement for former deputy governor Sandiaga Uno.
The council’s special committee for deputy governor selection, comprising 25 councillors representing each faction in the legislative body, has revealed that it will hold a plenary meeting on July 22 to select the deputy governor. The committee is now determining the code of conduct for the plenary meeting, the committee’s undersecretary Bestari Barus said.
The council aimed to hold a plenary meeting by the end of this month first to endorse the code of conduct as well as to announce the councillors assigned to be members of the final selection committee.
The committee will encourage the implementation of the code of conduct related to technical matters in the selection process.
Bestari said the selection committee members, spearheaded by nine councillors, would be appointed from the current special committee, or a representative of each of the nine factions.
Prior to endorsing the code of conduct, the committee will consult with the Home Ministry and the General Elections Commission (KPU), he said.
“There will be a consultation with the ministry in regard to the legal umbrella of each clause of the code of conduct and with the KPU in terms of technical matters,” the NasDem party politician told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
The council’s special committee has conducted study tours in Riau and Riau Island provinces to compile case studies from cities that had similar experiences with regional leader selection.
The committee has also listed Grobogan in Central Java as one of the study destinations, as the deputy regent position had remained vacant for nearly three years after the elected deputy regent died before his inauguration in 2016.
Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan has been working solo since Sandiaga resigned in August last year to compete in the presidential elections as vice-presidential candidate with Prabowo Subianto.
The vacant position had attracted the attention of Home Minister Tjahjo Kumolo, who pointed out the absence of a deputy governor during his speech at the plenary meeting at the City Council to commemorate Jakarta’s 492nd anniversary on Saturday.
“I hope that the City Council will soon select the deputy governor,” he said.
Speaking on the same occasion, Anies expressed hope that the councillors could soon select the new deputy governor.
“I hope they will hold the plenary soon. I am ready to work with whoever is selected,” he said.
Despite the absence of a deputy governor, he claimed that he did not have any problems in terms of executing city programs as there were working units tasked to carry out the programs. However, Anies admitted that he was overwhelmed with invitations to various events including those held by the central government.
The Gerindra Party and Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) — political parties that backed Anies and Sandiaga in the 2017 gubernatorial election — had proposed two candidates to fill in the vacant position, Ahmad Syaikhu and Agung Yulianto, both from the PKS.
The agreement on the two names was the result of a prolonged tug-of-war between the old allies that ended in February, with the nationalist party giving the nod to the Islamist party’s nominees.
Gerindra faction head at the City Council, Abdul Ghoni, told the Post that the key processes for the deputy governor selection would be carried out during the plenary meeting in July.
“If the first plenary meeting does not meet the quorum, there will only be one reschedule allowed. If the second meeting does not meet the quorum again, the whole process should be repeated,” he said, referring to the proposing of new candidates for deputy governor.
Should the plenary meeting fail, he said Gerindra might propose its own members for the position.
“I guess Gerindra has the right to nominate [our members] as we have given the PKS a chance,” he said.
PKS faction head at the City Council, Abdurrahman Suhaimi, brushed off the concerns saying it was too far ahead to think about such a scenario. The PKS would now focus on how the selection process would be run, he added.
