Hidayat Cited for Jumping the Gun on Campaigning

Ronna Nirmala

Posters of Hidayat Nur Wahid and his running mate, Didik J. Rachbini, have been seen on walls and buildings for weeks around Tanjung Barat in South Jakarta, while a week ago a big banner of incumbent Fauzi Bowo appeared across the subdistrict.

Three days ago, others banners of another candidate, Alex Noerdin, started to compete with Fauzi’s banners.

“It’s really crowded already, as we have almost all the candidates’ posters and banners within our neighborhood,” said Ashar, a Tanjung Barat resident.

On Wednesday, Nachrowi Ramli, Fauzi’s running mate, staged a big gathering in Tebet, South Jakarta, with members of Muhammadiyah to try to woo them into voting for Fauzi and himself.

All these campaign efforts have violated election regulations, seeing as the official campaign will only kick off this Sunday.

However, the candidates only received warnings from the Jakarta Elections Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu), which announced their violations to the public.

The committee named Hidayat and Didik as the top violators of a rule on campaign paraphernalia on Friday.

The committee said it found at least 5,458 campaign items, such as banners, posters and stickers, promoting the pair since June 14. A campaign rule stipulates that Jakarta gubernatorial candidates are allowed to post such items only during the official campaign period from, which this year runs from June 24 to July 7.

A total of six tickets have registered for the upcoming gubernatorial election on July 11.

“The [5,458] figure doesn’t cover everything,” Panwaslu chairman Ramdansyah said on Friday.

“Many people are still reporting finding banners and stickers [of Hidayat-Didik] inside public minivans, for instance.”

He added that the Alex Noerdin-Nono Sampono ticket was the second biggest violator of the restriction, as officers found 3,642 campaign items promoting them.

“We found most of the campaign items of this pair in the North Thousand Islands [subdistrict], totaling 1,135 items.”

Ramdansyah added that incumbent Fauzi and Nachrowi came in third with 2,667 campaign items, followed by Solo Mayor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and his running mate, Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama with 749 items.

“The two at the bottom are independent pairs Faisal Basri-Biem Benyamin with 691 items and Hendardji [Soepandji]-Riza [Patria] with 432 items,” Ramdansyah said.

Previously, Panwaslu officials had taken down close to 6,000 pieces of campaign paraphernalia illegally put up before the official campaign period.

A drive launched last week netted a total of 5,979 pieces of campaign paraphernalia such as posters, stickers, banners, party flags and others, Ramdansyah said.

South Jakarta topped the list with 4,679 pieces of paraphernalia followed by West Jakarta with 264, Central Jakarta with 231 and North Jakarta with 180.

“Some posters were pasted haphazardly. Other campaign material covered traffic signs or blocked roads,” Ramdansyah said.