Sausan Atika, Jakarta – The City Council has said it will continue with the process for appointing a new deputy governor after May 22, when the official results of the 2019 general election is to be announced.
The position has been left vacant August 2018, when then-deputy governor Sandiaga Uno resigned in order to run for vice president alongside Prabowo Subianto.
City Council Speaker Prasetio Edi Marsudi, who represents the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), confirmed the information with The Jakarta Post on Thursday at the National Monument in Central Jakarta.
Regarding the slow progress in selecting Sandiaga's replacement, Prasetio said that councilors were still busy with the vote count for their own reelection bids or for their political parties in the legislative election, or in connection with the presidential election.
"They are busy with the politics," he said, referring to the 2019 simultaneous legislative and presidential elections that were held on April 17.
The City Council has postponed the plenary meeting for appointing a new deputy governor, as more than 90 percent of its councilors ran for reelection. The plenary meeting is to make a selection among the two candidates from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) – Akhmad Syaikhu and Agung Yulianto – that the PKS and Gerindra Party have nominated.
The two parties backed Anies Baswedan and Sandiaga Uno in the 2017 gubernatorial election.
However, the council must first establish a selection committee of 25 councilors to develop a code of conduct for the plenary meeting. Each political party faction is to be allotted membership on this committee that is proportional to the number of seats they fill on the City Council.
City Council secretary Muhammad Yuliadi said on Thursday that the PDI-P was the only party that had appointed representatives to the selection committee, although all factions had been requested to do so in an official letter issued in March.