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Will Jakarta Traffic Problems Be the End of Governor Fauzi?
Carlos K.Y. Paath | February 16, 2012

Jakarta traffic. (JG Photo/Afriadi Hikmal/File) Jakarta traffic. (JG Photo/Afriadi Hikmal/File)
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padt
11:48am Feb 16, 2012

So in the end will it be a question of whether it was "Leave It To The Expert" or "The Expert Is Leaving." ?

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In what should come as no surprise to the millions of Jakartans who spend hours each day inching along the city’s streets, a big majority of Jakartans feel Governor Fauzi Bowo has failed to deal with the city’s traffic problems.

The question is what kind of effect this anger will have on Fauzi’s hopes for re-election this July.

That finding was included in the results of a new survey released on Wednesday.

Conducted from Feb. 1-7 by the Center for Social and Political Development Research (Pusbangsospol), the survey included responses from 1,000 eligible voters from across the capital .

“Eighty-two percent of 1,000 respondents said they were disappointed with the way the governor has handled the traffic problems,” said Pusbangsospol’s chairman, Heriansyah.

That negative sentiment could be a deciding factor in Fauzi’s re-election bid with the majority of respondents also citing traffic as the No. 1 problem to be addressed by the new governor.

The survey found that 24.2 percent of respondents see traffic jams as the city’s biggest problem, while 21 percent believe transportation and infrastructure issues are the primary concern.

Other surveys based solely on popularity have put Fauzi as the front-runner for the elections.

A survey published last week by the Center for Policy Studies and Strategic Development (Puskaptis) put Fauzi’s popularity rate at 93.14 percent, with a 51.52 percent electability.

Analysts, however, said these kinds of surveys are biased toward incumbents because of their greater name recognition.

Yunarto Wijaya, a political analyst at Charta Politika, said it was easy to read too much into popularity surveys.

“The Puskaptis survey claimed that Fauzi’s high popularity would be the determining factor for him to win the election, which isn’t true,” he said. “Fauzi is more popular than other figures simply because he’s the current governor and people know him.”

Analyst Arbi Sanit agreed, and added 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.

The latest survey found a high number of undecided voters, with 36.4 percent of respondents saying they did not care about the election or had not decided on their preferred candidate.

Based on popularity, Fauzi came out on top of the new survey with 28 percent, followed by his former deputy governor, Prijanto, at 17.8 percent. Former presidential guard commander Nono Sampono came in with 11.3 percent and the chairman of the Democratic Party’s Jakarta branch, Nachrowi Ramli, had 6.1 percent.

Prijanto, Nono and Nachrowi are all retired military generals.

Economist Faisal Basri, an independent, had 10.2 percent.

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