Jakarta Governor election, 15th February 2017

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

We really need some Indonesians on this forum

Anyway this election is getting a lot of press, based on a high-profile (and rather nasty) campaign against incumbent Ahok, a Christian of Chinese ethnicity (the latter being basically the SE Asian equivalent of Jews, the former being highly controversial what with the saudisation of the Muslim world). Ahok is a personal friend (and successor in his role) to Jokowi, but the latter's popularity may not save him from a run-off. Basically this whole race has descended into a mess, with various factions of the Indonesian establishment wining and dining unsavoury Islamist types for POWAH.

[Cynthia]

I am Malaysian Chinese, and from what I know most of what you said is correct. The whole campaign is essentially a proxy fight between islamists and secularists, and I think Ahok will likely lose the runoff, but not by a lot, as I think most, if not all, Agus voter would choose Anies over Ahok.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Ahok was just defeated in the run-off.

[Famous Mortimer]

A funny side story about this election is that the guy Marvel Comics hired to illustrate the new X-Men reboot was an Islamist opponent of Ahok. He hid Islamist, anti-Christian/anti-Jewish messages in the first issue, specifically in a scene where the Jewish X-Man Kitty Pryde announces she is the new leader. Marvel kind of panicked for the first day because they couldn't decide if firing the bigotted Muslim was more or less problematic than letting him stay. Eventually he was fired.