While Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama remains a somewhat divisive figure, with whole organizations devoted to bringing him down, it seems like Jakartans overall are pretty happy with the work he’s done so far and would be likely to re-elect him in 2017.
That’s according to the newly released results of a new survey by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) which shows that 67% of Jakarta citizens are satisfied with Ahok’s performance.
Voters in Jakarta are very rational, so from an evaluation of his performance of course there is a correlation with their choosing to elect him again,” said CSIS executive director Phillips Vermonte today as quoted by Tempo.
Out of the survey’s 400 respondents, only 29% said were not satisfied with Ahok’s performance.
Closely correlating with the satisfaction rate, 62% of respondents said Ahok had managed to bring about significant changes to the capital. Many credited him with major improvements in infrastructure and health care services, with the dredging of rivers, increased number of parks and increased performance among bureaucrats touted as specific examples of improvements he had spearheaded.
One area Ahok did not get good ratings in was his administration’s handling of crime, particularly prostitution (which is no doubt related to the media’s massive coverage of online prostitution scandals last year).
One remarkable result of the survey was that, when asked if they were proud to be Jakartans during the administration of Governor Ahok, 98% of respondents said yes.
“Finally, even in the midst of all these problems and anxiety, most remain proud to be citizens of the capital,” Phillips said.
The CSIS survey was held from January 5-10 in five regions of Jakarta. Based on a random sampling of 400 respondents, CSIS says the results have a possible error rate of 4.9%.
