Many were understandably disappointed when Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama announced he would run for re-election in 2017 with political party support instead of as an independent candidate, particularly because he could’ve been the first independent candidate to have a realistic shot at winning an election of this magnitude in Indonesia, which could have in turn spelled the beginning of the end for political party dominance in Indonesian politics.
But Ahok was not the only candidate with aspirations of running as an independent. Ichsanuddin Noorsy, an economics analyst and a former member of the House of Representatives, yesterday went to the Jakarta Regional Elections Commission (KPUD) to register himself as an independent candidate in the 2017 election. He brought with him several cardboard boxes that he claimed contains the copies of 600,000 KTP ID cards from Jakartans who supported his independent run, which he supposedly gathered without any fanfare from November 2015 to August 2016. This amount would have been more than the minimum requirement of 532,213 KTPs needed to legally be allowed to run as an independent candidate.
But Ichsanuddin didn’t even pass the initial stage of KPUD’s verification process. By their count, Ichsanuddin only managed to gather 19,746 valid KTPs, falling far short of the minimum requirement and his off-the-mark claim. The council invalidated many of them due to procedural errors such as not including the right form.
The window of time to register independent candidates closed at 4pm yesterday, meaning we won’t have any independent candidate running in 2017.
Independent political group Teman Ahok (Friends of Ahok), managed to gather over 1 million KTPs from Jakartans in supporters of Ahok’s independent run. However, the House of Representatives (DPR) passed a legislation along the way requiring KPUD to physically verify each and every one of those KTPs at people’s homes and/or workplace in just a two-week period – a near-impossible task that many saw as being designed to prevent Ahok and future independent candidates to run for public office without political party support.
