Conservative Muslim scholar leads Depok election tally

Abdul Khalik The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Residents of Jakarta's fast-growing satellite town of Depok rushed to polling stations on Sunday to cast their votes in the municipality's first direct election.

By 8 p.m. on Sunday evening, conservative Muslim scholar Nur Mahmudi Ismail was leading the tally with 29,129 or 45 percent of the 66,000 votes counted, followed by Badrul Kamal with 25,602 or 38 percent of the vote.

Sunday's election for the mayor of Depok, which is located south of Jakarta, proceeded smoothly with no major complaints heard from candidates or voters.

Most polling stations were well-prepared for the event, with local election committee members ushering in eager voters as early as 7 a.m.

"We have monitored all polling stations and found no significant problems. Most voters lined up orderly and there were enough committee members at each polling station to serve the voters," Depok election committee member for information Abdul Choliq told The Jakarta Post.

A total of 908,890 of Depok's 1.2 million people were eligible to cast their votes at 1,923 polling stations across the municipality.

Choliq, however, said that voter turnout had not been ideal.

"Each polling station started counting the ballots at 1 p.m., and we found in our monitoring that only about 80 percent of eligible voters turned up to cast their votes. Probably, they had something else to do," he said.

A recent telephone poll revealed that 19.5 percent of Depok residents in the middle- to higher-income brackets and 13.2 percent of residents in the lower-income bracket would not vote in the election.

Five pairs of candidate contested the June 26 election: Abdul Wahab and running mate Ilham Wijaya of the Democratic Party; Harun Heryana and Farkhan AR of the National Mandate Party (PAN); Badrul Kamal and Syihabuddin of the Golkar Party; Yus Ruswandi and Soetadi Dipowongso of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P); and Nur Mahmudi Ismail of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS).

The provisional election tally showed that Nur Mahmudi, one of the founders of the PKS, garnered 45 percent of 66,000 votes counted, followed by Badrul. The other three candidates garnered a total of around 11,000 votes.

The PKS dominated the legislative election in the Depok area in 2004, winning 24.49 percent of the vote of 722,225.

Whoever wins Sunday's election, however, has a daunting task ahead. Voters have expressed high hopes that the direct election will produce a mayor who can ease chronic traffic congestion, improve town planning and reduce the gap between high and low earners in Depok.

"Hopefully the 'cleanest' and most capable pair will win. I personally want them to make Depok free from traffic jams. I am sick of being on the road for hours. Depok traffic is even worse than Jakarta's," Rani, 27, a resident of Depok Lama subdistrict in Pancoran Mas district, told the Post after casting his vote.

Around a third of Depok residents work in Jakarta and have to travel on Jl. Margonda Raya, a road notorious for its traffic jams due to the several big malls and housing complexes positioned on it, with more malls under construction.