Jakarta voters lined up at polling booths on Wednesday to cast their votes in the Indonesian capital’s gubernatorial election, which has exposed
religious and racial fault lines in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
The vote is one of the 101 regional elections to be held simultaneously across the archipelago, but has hogged all the attention. The city's incumbent governor is Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, an ethnic Chinese Christian. Known by his Hakka nickname Ahok, he is in court on blasphemy charges after he said, in a campaign speech, that voters were deceived by hard-line Muslims who cited a Quranic verse in support of their view that non-Muslims shouldn't hold office.
Ahok is running against two candidates. Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono is the eldest son of former President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and Anies Baswedan, a former Education Minister who served in the administration of current President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.
Agus is backed by his father's centrist Democratic Party, while Anies is backed by the right-wing Gerindra Party of Prabowo Subianto — Jokowi’s main rival in the 2014 presidential election. Gerindra aligned with conservative Islamic party PKS in the previous presidential election and has done so in the Jakarta polls. Ahok’s candidacy is supported by Jokowi’s party — the centrist and secular PDIP.
Having accusing Ahok of insulting Islam, hard-line Muslim groups, like the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), have been organizing massive anti-Ahok
protests since last October and now find themselves courted by his rivals.
http://time.com/4671464/indonesia-elections-islam-jakarta-ahok-democracy/
