Did Sectarian Politics Win in Jakarta? Only the Runoff Will Tell

"I'm surprised this kind of situation happened in Jakarta," said Muhammad Qodari, executive director of Indo Barometer, a polling company, "because Jakartans are tolerant, and religious sentiment should not have played such a big role in the election."

Early this month, Mr. Muhammad said, 70 percent of registered Jakarta voters who participated in a survey said they approved of Mr. Basuki's work as governor. But more than half of those people said they would not vote for the governor because they believed he had insulted Islam, Mr. Muhammad said.

More than 85 percent of the capital's registered voters are Muslims.

"Religious sentiment played a significant role and undermined the performance of Ahok in this election," Mr. Muhammad said.

Mr. Basuki was accused of blasphemy after he lightheartedly cited a Quran verse in September that warns Muslims agains t taking Christians and Jews as friends. Given Indonesia's transition to democracy since the late 1990s, he said in a speech, it would be acceptable for Muslims to cast ballots for a Christian.

Hard-line Islamist groups responded with a series of mass protests in Jakarta — including one in November that turned violent — demanding that the governor be prosecuted or even lynched. Under pressure, the police charged Mr. Basuki with blasphemy; his trial opened in December, even as he was campaigning.

Supporters of Mr. Basuki have accused his political opponents of orchestrating the demonstrations to sabotage his campaign. Before the protests, he had been polling as high as 52 percent, a level of support that would have enabled him to win Wednesday's election outright.

Mr. Basuki is only the second non-Muslim governor in Jakarta's history, and if elected he would be the first non-Muslim directly elected to the prominent post. He inherited the position after his predecessor, Joko Widodo, was elected president in 2014.

Photo Mr. Anies, a former minister of education and culture, emphasized his Muslim faith during the campaign. Credit Antara Foto, via Reuters

Indonesia is the world's most populous predominantly Muslim nation, with 190 million adherents to the faith. But it has influential Christian, Hindu and Buddhist minorities, and it has had a secular Constitution and government since 1945, the year it gained independence.

In recent years, however, fears of "creeping Islamization" have emerged. Autonomous provincial, district and city governments have passed hundreds of bylaws inspired by Islamic law, or Shariah, over the past decade. Most of the regulations single out women — enforcing dress and morality codes — while others target religious minorities and gay, lesbian and transgender Indonesians.

Analysts have expressed fear that if sectarian politics prevails in Indonesia's relatively cosmopolitan, well-educated capital, it would bode ill for secularism in the rest of the country.

"Religion had a big impact in this election," said Benny Susetyo, a senior leader of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Indonesia, who said that Mr. Basuki's two opponents in the election had "manipulated religion" by emphasizing that they were Muslim.

"We have already had problems with radical Islamists and with terrorists," he said. "It's very worrying."

Other analysts, however, were encouraged by the fact that Mr. Basuki had finished first on Wednesday, despite a campaign charged with ethnic and sectarian tension.

"I think the headline should be that Jakartans took a step forward against intolerance," said Jeffrey A. Winters, a professor of political science at Northwestern University and a longtime observer of Indonesian affairs.

"They ignored the call that Muslims can only vote for Muslims," he said. "People trying to frame politics in religious terms have failed."

That remains to be confirmed. Some analysts expect most supporters of the candidate who came in third on Wednesday — Agus Yudhoyono, who conceded after receiving an estimated 17 percent of the vote — to back Mr. Anies, who has deftly promoted his Muslim faith and Javanese ethnicity, in the second round.

But machinations among Indonesia's large secular parties, which dominate national politics, may influence matters, some analysts say.

Mr. Yudhoyono is out of the race, but his father, former President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is the chairman of the Democratic Party, and he could sway the election, they say. Mr. Basuki's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, and the opposition Gerindra party of Mr. Anies, are said to be courting Mr. Yudhoyono for resources and voters.

Former President Yudhoyono was accused of helping to finance the protests against Mr. Basuki to help his son's campaign. He has denied those accusations.

"The battle continues, and it's too early to say whether the pluralists will win, or the Islamic extremists on the other side," said Bonar Tigor Naipospos, vice chairman of the executive board of the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace in Jakarta, a research institute. "Everything in politics is hard to predict in Jakarta."

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Source: Did Sectarian Politics Win in Jakarta? Only the Runoff Will Tell