Djarot won't leave PDI-P for Ahok

JAKARTA. Jakarta deputy governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat has emphasized his commitment not to leave the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) to join Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama in next year's gubernatorial election.

"My appointment as deputy governor was based on the party's recommendation. If the governor wanted to partner with me, he should have followed the party’s mechanism," Djarot told journalists on Monday.

However, he respected Ahok’s decision to nominate Financial and Asset Management Board head Heru Budi Hartono as his running mate in the 2017 gubernatorial election.

He believed that political parties were still needed to push the democratization in the country amid public criticism of the poor performance of politicians.

Djarot praised his party as the "perfect medium for me to express my idealism and ideas.”

"I have been in the PDI-P for a long time. Now I am not merely an ordinary member, but a member of party’s central executive board," Djarot said.

He said that actually PDI-P had expressed its intention to support Ahok and himself in next year’s election. He said Ahok and Heru had decided to run as independent candidates as demanded by Teman Ahok (Friends of Ahok), a group of volunteers who had collected the photocopies of voters’ identity cards (IDs) required for the pair to run as independent tickers.

"It's the wish of Teman Ahok, not Teman Djarot," he said.

Ahok said previously he had picked Heru as his running mate after he was advised by Teman Ahok that the PDI-P had not shown a clear response to Ahok’s proposal to pair with Djarot. (Callistasia Anggun Wijaya)