Millions of people in the Indonesian capital voted for their governor for the first time yesterday, the latest in a wave of direct local elections hailed as key to strengthening democracy in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
The Indonesian capital's current deputy governor, Fauzi Bowo, was comfortably ahead of a rival backed by a conservative Islamic party in a sample count yesterday.
"I'm very happy, I've been looking forward to this day," said Wanem, a 47-year-old housewife as she waited to cast her ballot. "We never had the right to chose before, someone always did it for us."
Like many Indonesians, she uses only one name.
Voting for governor ended following a campaign that threw a spotlight on the role of Islam in politics, corruption and a host of social and environmental problems in the city.
Winning Jakarta is seen as an important scene-setter for parliamentary and presidential elections in 2009.
"I just want to have a better Jakarta. More jobs, no traffic jams, no floods," said Suhendi, a middle-aged man who had just cast his vote in a polling station in West Jakarta.
Only two candidates were contesting the election.
Adang Daradjatun, a former deputy national police chief, is backed by the Justice and Prosperity Party.
The conservative Islamic party has pledged cleaner government, but has also raised questions over what exactly it's Islamic agenda is in the world's most populous Muslim country.
The young party has grown fast, securing 7.34 percent of the vote and 45 of the national parliament's 550 seats in 2004.
His opponent Bowo is backed by a coalition of 19 parties, including leading national parties Golkar and the Indonesian Democratic Struggle Party.
A sample, or "quick count" -- in which a sample of the votes are tallied -- conducted by the Indonesian Survey Institute, a private pollster, and Metro TV indicated that Bowo was leading with about 57 percent of the vote. Daradjatun had 43 percent.
During the two-week campaign, both parties appeared to rely on a traditional formula of throwing festive rallies, with popular singers, to draw crowds.
Media reports said some of those attending rallies were paid up to 35,000 rupiah (US$3.78) each for "transport money" to attend.
Plenty of mud-slinging marked the campaigning too.
Daradjatun rode on an anti-corruption ticket, accusing the city administration of incompetence.
But Bowo, an urban planning specialist, says his years of experience in local government are a reason to vote for him.
Meanwhile, Bowo's coalition of parties has raised concerns that a Daradjatun victory could result in Shariah-style laws, a view shared by some rights activists.
Daradjatun has dismissed this as a smear campaign and said he has no intention of, for example, closing legal nightspots.
Police in China detained dozens of pastors of one of its largest underground churches over the weekend, a church spokesperson and relatives said, in the biggest crackdown on Christians since 2018. The detentions, which come amid renewed China-US tensions after Beijing dramatically expanded rare earth export controls last week, drew condemnation from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who on Sunday called for the immediate release of the pastors. Pastor Jin Mingri (金明日), founder of Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the Chinese government, was detained at his home in the southern city of Beihai on Friday evening, said
Floods on Sunday trapped people in vehicles and homes in Spain as torrential rain drenched the northeastern Catalonia region, a day after downpours unleashed travel chaos on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Local media shared videos of roaring torrents of brown water tearing through streets and submerging vehicles. National weather agency AEMET decreed the highest red alert in the province of Tarragona, warning of 180mm of rain in 12 hours in the Ebro River delta. Catalan fire service spokesman Oriol Corbella told reporters people had been caught by surprise, with people trapped “inside vehicles, in buildings, on ground floors.” Santa Barbara Mayor Josep Lluis
The Venezuelan government on Monday said that it would close its embassies in Norway and Australia, and open new ones in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe in a restructuring of its foreign service, after weeks of growing tensions with the US. The closures are part of the “strategic reassignation of resources,” Venezueland President Nicolas Maduro’s government said in a statement, adding that consular services to Venezuelans in Norway and Australia would be provided by diplomatic missions, with details to be shared in the coming days. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had received notice of the embassy closure, but no
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
RSS