Ronna Nirmala – A religious- and race-based smear campaign being mounted against the challenger ahead of the Sept. 20 Jakarta gubernatorial runoff vote is falling largely on deaf ears, a new survey suggests.
The results of the poll by the University of Indonesia's Center for Political Studies, released on Sunday, showed that only 39 percent of voters considered a candidate's religion a key criteria in voting for them.
Dirga Ardiansa, one of the researchers behind the survey, said 80 percent of the 600 respondents polled between Aug. 27 and Sept. 2 had already decided who they were going to vote for and would not change their minds before election day.
However, he noted that among the different religious groups, Muslim voters appeared more likely than others to take the candidate's faith into account.
Forty-two percent said they considered it a factor, while 60 percent of non-Muslim respondents said it was not a factor at all.
The poll also revealed an interesting split along ethnic lines. Seventy-four percent of respondents who identified as Javanese, the largest ethnic group in Jakarta, said they had already made their choice and would not change their minds, compared to 69 percent of those who identified as Betawi, representing the small but influential group backing Governor Fauzi Bowo.
By contrast, 51 percent of those who identified as ethnic Chinese, who voted overwhelmingly for Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, the mayor of Solo, in the first round of the election on July 11, said they were unsure who to pick in the runoff.
The survey also found that only 26 percent of respondents would vote for a candidate because they shared the same religion or ethnicity.
The findings from the UI survey come as the challenger's running mate, Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama, comes under attack from hard-liners over his Christian faith and Chinese ethnicity.
The issue was first sparked by dangdut singer Rhoma Irama, one of Fauzi's celebrity endorsers, who urged Muslims in a sermon not to vote for non-Muslim leaders. Since then, other conservative clerics have taken up the call.
The escalating rhetoric has prompted warnings of a possible security breakdown on polling day.
Neta S. Pane, chairman of Indonesia Police Watch, called on the Jakarta Police to be on high alert for anything that could compromise the security condition in the capital as a result of the religious and racial smear campaign.
"The situation could deteriorate because of the increasingly radical stances of each ticket's supporters," he said at a discussion of the survey results.
"The police chief must call in the two candidates and get them to commit to a peaceful campaign, promise to concede defeat gracefully, and get their supporters under control."
Neta said the tensions surrounding the runoff were far higher than during the first round of voting, when none of the six candidates was realistically expected to win outright. Jokowi took the first round with 43 percent of votes, with Fauzi second with 34 percent.
Irwansyah, a UI researcher, said another threat to the election was the perennial specter of vote-buying. He said the survey showed 42 percent of respondents believed the rival camps would offer cash or other gifts in exchange for votes.
He added the demographic most likely to be targeted through such a campaign was women between the ages of 26 and 40, with only a high school education.