Jakarta’s Christian Governor on Wednesday lost heavily to a Muslim former Government Minister in an election run-off, private polls indicated, after a divisive battle that has damaged Indonesia’s reputation as a bastion of tolerant Islam.
Anies Baswedan, who was accused of pandering to hardliners to win votes, and his supporters cheered as news came through that surveys showed him winning by over 10 percentage points against Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, who was fighting for his job while standing trial for blasphemy.
Official results are not expected until early May but the private pollsters, who count a sample of votes, are usually accurate. The vote was seen as a test of whether the moderate Islam traditionally practised in the world’s most populous Muslim country is under threat from hardliners, who have led a series of mass demonstrations against Purnama over allegations he insulted the Koran.
It came against a backdrop of rising religious intolerance that has tainted the image of the diverse Indonesian archipelago as a pluralistic country in recent years, with a surge in attacks on minorities.