Jakarta election: Ahok makes last appeal as polling booths open

Muslim women shows their ink-stained fingers after voting during the runoff election in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Wednesday. Photograph: Achmad Ibrahim/AP

Polls have opened in Indonesia's capital for what is expected to be a tight race to elect Jakarta's governor after campaigns riven by religious and racial tensions.

More than 7 million Jakartans are expected to vote in Wednesday's poll, a race that pits the ethnic Chinese Christian incumbent, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama – better known by his nickname Ahok – against the former education and culture minister Anies Baswedan.

Days out from the vote, two separate surveys showed just one point between them.

In the capital of the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, the election has been billed as a test of the country's pluralist traditions. If he wins, Ahok will be the first non-Muslim directly elected to the post.

Casting his vote alongside his wife and son this morning, Ahok wrote on Twitter that today's vote would determine Jakarta's fate, and that democracy should be celebrated.

As deputy Jakarta governor in 2014, Ahok inherited the governorship from Joko Widodo who won the presidential election that year.

Ahok, a brash and sometimes outspoken governor who has taken on big problems in Jakarta, such as flooding and corruption, has long angered religious hardliners.

Incumbent Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, his wife Veronica and son Nicholas show their ballot papers at a polling station. Photograph: Bay Ismoyo/AFP/Getty Images

Last year the popular governor found himself embroiled in a blasphemy trial, after he cited a verse from the Koran, Al Maidah 51, telling voters they should not be deceived by religious leaders who claim Muslims cannot vote for Christians.

That case is ongoing – on Thursday Ahok will hear prosecutors read their sentencing demands in court – and it has significantly dented his popularity. Late last year Islamic hardliners staged several massive protests in the capital, while discrimination has percolated through neighbourhoods across the capital.

Critics have accused Ahok's rival, Anies Baswedan, of pandering to the Islamists, a charge he has repeatedly denied. A poll released last week by Saiful Manjani Research and Consulting showed that religious sentiment was the main reason voters were drawn to Baswedan.

In the neighbourhoods of Jakarta, banners claiming that Muslims who vote for Ahok will be denied burial rites have been strung up at local mosques.

On Monday a Facebook user was reported to police after he wrote that it was halal, or permissible, to rape women voting for the Chinese Christian incumbent.

A group, calling themselves the "Al Maidah tour", organised through a phone app, has encouraged Indonesians to "guard" more than 13,000 polling booths around the city. The government has warned people not to join the group, while police have banned mass rallies on voting day.

More than 60,000 military and police have been deployed across the city to ensure voting runs smoothly.

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