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President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party sent a strong signal on Friday that it was ready to back Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo’s re-election bid this year.

Ahmad Mubarok, a member of the party’s Council of Patrons, said Fauzi was the strongest candidate, going by the results of recent public surveys.

“We will look at the surveys in making our decision,” he said. “But the final decision will be determined by the party’s council.”

He was referring to surveys conducted by the Center for Policy Studies and Strategic Development (Puskaptis) and the Cyrus Network, both of which had Fauzi as the most popular of the potential candidates.

“If the supreme council agrees, it would rule out Nachrowi [Ramli] from the race,” he said.

Nachrowi Ramli, a retired Army general and the chairman of the Democratic Party’s Jakarta chapter, earlier claimed that he had already secured the party’s backing for the July gubernatorial election.

“Even if he doesn’t get our support for a run at governor, we would give him another position,” Ahmad said, declining to provide details.

But Irfan Gani, secretary of the Democrats’ Jakarta chapter, said party officials had already committed to Nachrowi.

“Whether it is for governor or deputy governor, we will support him,” he said.

The survey by Puskaptis, published this week, put Fauzi’s popularity rate at 93.14 percent with a 51.52 percent electability. He was followed by a former maritime affairs and fisheries minister, Fadel Muhammad, with 61.31 percent popularity and 33.38 percent electability.

Fadel is thought to be one of four possible candidates being considered by the Golkar Party. The others are celebrity-turned-legislator Tantowi Yahya, head of the Jakarta chapter of Golkar, Priya Ramadhani, and lawmaker Aziz Syamsuddin.

The survey had Tantowi as the leading candidate for deputy governor, with a 67.38 percent popularity rate, and Priya in second with 14.59 percent.

Yunarto Wijaya, a political analyst at Charta Politika, said the public should be wary of “biased” public surveys.

“The public has to be able to be critical regarding certain survey results and how they extract conclusions from it,” he said.

“The Puskaptis survey claimed that Fauzi’s high popularity would be the main determining factor for him to win the election, which isn’t true,” he said. “Fauzi is more popular than other figures because he’s the incumbent. Of course a lot of people know him.”

Analyst Arbi Sanit agreed, adding that there were two kinds of popularity, negative and positive.

“Some people are fed up with [Fauzi] because he has failed to do his job. So he’s famous because of his failures,” he said.

Yunarto said it was odd that Puskaptis had not included such popular figures as Solo Mayor Joko Widodo in the survey.

“If Joko one of the available choices, I bet Fauzi and Tantowi wouldn’t have ranked that high,” he said.

He said he suspected the survey was done to sway neutral voters. “When people are unsure, they will pick whoever they think is likely to win and who others are voting for,” he said.

The survey did include economist Faisal Basri, who has said he will run as an independent. He was third with 23.41 percent.

Ibramsyah, a political analyst at University of Indonesia, said the election should focus on programs, not personalities.

“People are tired of promises, so the candidates better charm Jakartans with their plans to solve Jakarta’s problems,” he said.

“In this sense, independent candidates could attract more votes, but only if they have the money to make sure they can get their message across.”