Jakarta – During the first election debate back in January, vice presidential candidate Ma'ruf Amin became an object of online mockery for his poor performance.
However, the 76-year-old cleric has made a comeback following his solo performance in the vice presidential debate against his younger rival Sandiaga Uno on Sunday.
Analysis by social media monitoring site PoliticaWave has found that Ma'ruf, who is the non-active head of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), may have outshined his competitor Sandiaga in Sunday's debate.
"Overall, Pak Ma'ruf Amin dominates netizens' conversation on social media by 58.26 percent to Sandiaga Uno's 41.74 percent," PoliticaWave analytics head Nadia Shabilla said at a press conference on Tuesday, as quoted by Antara.
Similarly, the survey revealed that 98 percent of the discussion was positive toward the senior Muslim cleric, higher than the businessman's 79 percent.
Even when social media users' dialogues were examined for each segment of the debate, Ma'ruf still garnered an average of 97 percent positive remarks.
"We can conclude from our analysis that KH. Ma'ruf outplayed [his opponent] in all segments of the debate. This is thanks to his ability to address every matter in a composed manner during the debate," Nabila said.