Jakarta – Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama has refuted an accusation that he had distributed staple food packages across Jakarta in an attempt to buy votes from residents to win the runoff election scheduled for Wednesday.

The incumbent gubernatorial candidate said since he started his political career, he had never engaged in vote-buying practices by distributing staple food to residents.

"I don't know about [the staple food distribution]. If you look at my political career, you'll see that I have never liked basic commodity distribution tactics like this," he said, as quoted by tribunnews.com.

Ahok added that a better strategy for him to win the election was to raise public awareness on the various programs he had carried out during his tenure as Jakarta governor.

As reported earlier, although the gubernatorial runoff election campaign has entered its cooling-off period, the campaign teams of Ahok and his rival, Anies Baswedan, reported each other to the city's Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu Jakarta) for allegedly distributing staple food to residents.

Bawaslu head Mimah Susanti said the agency would follow up the reports and make sure that no staple food packages were distributed until after the election. (idb/ebf)

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2017/04/18/ahok-denies-accusation-of-vote-buying.html