Markus Junianto Sihaloho, Surabaya – Former president and opposition leader Megawati Sukarnoputri revealed on Friday that she had to fight against a "great current" to back the ticket that eventually won the Jakarta gubernatorial election last month.
Megawati said she got her party to nominate Joko "Jokowi" Widodo and his running mate, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, despite surveys and recommendations early on that suggested they stood little chance of winning.
"I decided that we should back them on the basis of a more ideological form of politics that I want to develop," she said during a national meeting of her Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) in Surabaya.
She added that looking back at the process now, the party should feel vindicated that it stuck by one of its own despite the temptation to endorse a higher-profile candidate with better polling numbers, such as Fauzi Bowo, the losing incumbent.
Megawati also held up the new leaders as breathing fresh air into the Jakarta bureaucracy that has been stagnate for years.
"The win for Joko and Basuki is a victory for the aspirations of the people who are tired of seeing diversity get trampled on, tolerance become a luxury and violence in the name of religion, race or ethnicity become acceptable," the PDI-P chairwoman said.
She also said that their victory, which saw them garner 54 percent of votes in last month's runoff against Fauzi, was proof that political grandstanding by parties did not always work to sway an election.
Fauzi was backed by most of the major political parties, including those whose candidates were among the incumbent's most vocal critics ahead of the first round of voting in July.
Joko and Basuki were only endorsed by the PDI-P and the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra).
Less than a week after the election, however, the two parties began bickering over who played the bigger role in influencing the victory.
Ahmad Basarah, a PDI-P deputy secretary general, expressed discontent with Gerindra's role in securing the pair's victory, saying the partnership "was not effective." "What was influential was the PDI-P machinery," he said.
He argued that while the PDI-P deployed senior officials to campaign on behalf of the ticket, Gerindra made minimal efforts at the grassroots level and appeared to exploit the pair's growing popularity to promote their co-founder, Prabowo Subianto, as a potential presidential candidate for the 2014 election.
Martin Hutabarat, a member of Gerindra's board of patrons, denied that Prabowo was using the election results to boost his own popularity.
Prabowo last ran during the 2009 presidential election as Megawati's running mate. He now regularly polls as the favorite to win the 2014 election, which Megawati is also widely expected to contest.