Governor Ahok at his inauguration ceremony
Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama officially took over the job of governor of Jakarta about six months ago. A recent survey of Jakartans shows that the capitol’s citizens give Ahok a barely passing grade for his first 6 months, but also shows that they’re surprisingly upbeat about the city’s future.
The face-to-face survey conducted on 600 respondents by polling group Litbang Kompas (Kompas Research and Development), spread across five regions of Jakarta, showed that most citizens felt only some limited improvements had been made during the first six months of Ahok’s leadership.
Respondents were asked to rate what they thought of Jakarta’s overall condition on a scale of one to ten. The average score given was a 6.54, below a 7 which the survey defined as “good.”
In terms of their satisfaction with Ahok’s performance, Jakartans gave the governor a 6.62, another vaguely approving but unenthusiastic score.
The public gave stronger scores when asked about “social relations” in Jakarta, which yielded an average score of 7.6. This question specifically asked people to assess the city in terms of freedom of speech, religion and social harmony.
Residents also gave favorable scores to improvements in education, reductions in bureaucracy, water and health services.
However, one area that respondents gave a strong negative score to was safety, with 4 out of 5 respondents saying they felt Jakarta was generally unsafe. One of the main causes cited for that is the rash of motorcycle robberies that gripped the city in the first few months of the year.
Respondents did seem optimistic about the future of the city under Ahok, with 8 out of 10 saying they were confident the government could improve education and healthcare services in the future. Surprisingly, residents were also bullish on the state of transportation in Jakarta, with 70 percent saying they were confident the government could improve public transportation in the near future.
