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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/w...tian-breaking-barriers-in-indonesia.html?_r=0
JAKARTA, Indonesia — Jakarta, the sprawling Indonesian megacity of 10 million people, has a new governor with a difference.
It’s not just Basuki Tjahaja Purnama’s hard-charging style that sets him apart from his predecessors. It’s also the fact that he is Christian and ethnic Chinese, and is improbably running the capital of the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation.
Mr. Basuki, a 48-year-old Protestant whose grandfather was a tin miner from Guangzhou, China, was sworn in Wednesday at the State Palace by President Joko Widodo.
None of Jakarta’s previous governors have been Christian or of Chinese ancestry, except for one who served briefly as an appointee half a century ago (like Mr. Basuki, he was both). And despite Indonesia’s history of discrimination — and, at times, savage violence — against ethnic Chinese, Mr. Basuki says he considers neither his faith nor his ethnicity to be a political handicap.
“When people told me ‘the Chinese are a minority,’ my father would say to tell them that we are more patriotic,” Mr. Basuki said in a recent interview. “If one day Indonesia is occupied by a foreign country, my father said he would be in front of the front line to fight for our independence again.”
Mr. Basuki was Jakarta’s deputy governor under Mr. Joko, who was elected president in July, and he has run the city for much of this year in Mr. Joko’s absence. Like Mr. Joko, Mr. Basuki is one of a small but growing group of political upstarts who gained national attention for running clean, effective local governments, in a country where corruption has long been a fact of life.
Though Chinese-Indonesians make up just over 1 percent of the vast Indonesian archipelago’s population, historically they have tended to wield economic clout beyond their numbers, which has often led to resentment. For decades, they were subjected to discriminatory laws and regulations.
Anti-Chinese sentiment exploded into rioting in cities across Indonesia in 1998, amid protests against then-President Suharto’s authoritarian rule. In Jakarta, more than a thousand people were killed in the rioting, more than 150 women were raped and entire blocks in the Chinatown district were razed.
While some affluent Chinese families fled to neighboring Singapore after the riots, Mr. Basuki’s family stayed. “We are descendants of China, but our motherland is Indonesia,” he said.
A former mining consultant, Mr. Basuki first ran for office in 2005, winning a local election on his native island of Belitung, off the southeast coast of Sumatra, in a district where 93 percent of the voters were Muslim. “I asked them why they wanted me to run, because I am of Chinese descent and a Christian,” he recalled of the local residents who approached him. “They said, ‘We don’t care — we know who you are. We know your character.’ ”
Bambang Harymurti, who was an editor in chief of Tempo magazine, a leading Indonesian newsweekly, said that some Indonesians, particularly in Jakarta’s more affluent circles, have a phobia about Chinese-Indonesians’ growing participation in high-level politics.
“The indigenous Indonesians may have the numbers, but Chinese dominate the economy,” Mr. Bambang said. “So these people are thinking, ‘Will they control the politics with Ahok as governor?’ ”
Opponents made Mr. Basuki’s ethnicity and religion an issue during Jakarta’s 2012 gubernatorial race, when he was Mr. Joko’s running mate. And when Mr. Joko, a Muslim, ran for president, he was subjected to a rumor campaign that characterized him as an ethnic-Chinese Christian.
Still, the electorate has evolved, said Philips J. Vermonte, head of the department of politics and international relations at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, noting that the ethnicity-based attacks against Mr. Basuki and Mr. Joko were unsuccessful.
Mr. Basuki’s “just get it done” attitude has been applauded by many Jakartans, but he has critics. Last month, members of the hard-line Islamic Defenders Front clashed with the police outside the Jakarta City Council and City Hall buildings as they protested Mr. Basuki’s pending swearing-in, saying that a non-Muslim should not be governor.
JAKARTA, Indonesia — Jakarta, the sprawling Indonesian megacity of 10 million people, has a new governor with a difference.
It’s not just Basuki Tjahaja Purnama’s hard-charging style that sets him apart from his predecessors. It’s also the fact that he is Christian and ethnic Chinese, and is improbably running the capital of the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation.
Mr. Basuki, a 48-year-old Protestant whose grandfather was a tin miner from Guangzhou, China, was sworn in Wednesday at the State Palace by President Joko Widodo.
None of Jakarta’s previous governors have been Christian or of Chinese ancestry, except for one who served briefly as an appointee half a century ago (like Mr. Basuki, he was both). And despite Indonesia’s history of discrimination — and, at times, savage violence — against ethnic Chinese, Mr. Basuki says he considers neither his faith nor his ethnicity to be a political handicap.
“When people told me ‘the Chinese are a minority,’ my father would say to tell them that we are more patriotic,” Mr. Basuki said in a recent interview. “If one day Indonesia is occupied by a foreign country, my father said he would be in front of the front line to fight for our independence again.”
Mr. Basuki was Jakarta’s deputy governor under Mr. Joko, who was elected president in July, and he has run the city for much of this year in Mr. Joko’s absence. Like Mr. Joko, Mr. Basuki is one of a small but growing group of political upstarts who gained national attention for running clean, effective local governments, in a country where corruption has long been a fact of life.
Though Chinese-Indonesians make up just over 1 percent of the vast Indonesian archipelago’s population, historically they have tended to wield economic clout beyond their numbers, which has often led to resentment. For decades, they were subjected to discriminatory laws and regulations.
Anti-Chinese sentiment exploded into rioting in cities across Indonesia in 1998, amid protests against then-President Suharto’s authoritarian rule. In Jakarta, more than a thousand people were killed in the rioting, more than 150 women were raped and entire blocks in the Chinatown district were razed.
While some affluent Chinese families fled to neighboring Singapore after the riots, Mr. Basuki’s family stayed. “We are descendants of China, but our motherland is Indonesia,” he said.
A former mining consultant, Mr. Basuki first ran for office in 2005, winning a local election on his native island of Belitung, off the southeast coast of Sumatra, in a district where 93 percent of the voters were Muslim. “I asked them why they wanted me to run, because I am of Chinese descent and a Christian,” he recalled of the local residents who approached him. “They said, ‘We don’t care — we know who you are. We know your character.’ ”
Bambang Harymurti, who was an editor in chief of Tempo magazine, a leading Indonesian newsweekly, said that some Indonesians, particularly in Jakarta’s more affluent circles, have a phobia about Chinese-Indonesians’ growing participation in high-level politics.
“The indigenous Indonesians may have the numbers, but Chinese dominate the economy,” Mr. Bambang said. “So these people are thinking, ‘Will they control the politics with Ahok as governor?’ ”
Opponents made Mr. Basuki’s ethnicity and religion an issue during Jakarta’s 2012 gubernatorial race, when he was Mr. Joko’s running mate. And when Mr. Joko, a Muslim, ran for president, he was subjected to a rumor campaign that characterized him as an ethnic-Chinese Christian.
Still, the electorate has evolved, said Philips J. Vermonte, head of the department of politics and international relations at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, noting that the ethnicity-based attacks against Mr. Basuki and Mr. Joko were unsuccessful.
Mr. Basuki’s “just get it done” attitude has been applauded by many Jakartans, but he has critics. Last month, members of the hard-line Islamic Defenders Front clashed with the police outside the Jakarta City Council and City Hall buildings as they protested Mr. Basuki’s pending swearing-in, saying that a non-Muslim should not be governor.
