REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA - Indonesia's presidential race isn't until July. But there's already one winner. Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, better known by his nickname "Ahok", has taken over as acting governor of the Indonesian capital Jakarta.
He is the first ethnic Chinese to do so in a country that is 95 percent native Indonesian and has the world's largest Muslim population. Indonesia's Chinese make up only about 2 percent of the 240 million population.
A Christian, Ahok succeeds Joko "Jokowi" Widodo who has stepped aside to run for the presidential election on July 9, which opinion polls suggest he will win. Ahok will automatically take over to complete Jokowi's five-year term if he does win.
Resented for their wide control over trade and business, and suspected of loyalty to China, Indonesian-Chinese have been deliberately kept out of the political and military hierarchy for most of the country's almost 70 years of independence. The resentment, which has burst into bloody riots in the past, appears to be on the wane, although it's not over.
Even critics of Jakarta's acting governor complain mostly about what they see as his abrasive style of governance, not his background.
"People are voting for a track record today," Ahok told Reuters in an interview in his office in April. "It's not about the race or religion...or some primordial idea of who should run (the country)."
Ahok has been the bad cop to Jokowi's good cop. In contrast to the typically soft-spoken and Javanese Jokowi, Ahok has gained a reputation for being a tough guy not afraid to shake up the city's sleepy bureaucracy.
"The first thing we have to fix here is the bureaucracy...by testing and evaluating their performance," Ahok said.
"We say to them if they don't want to follow us, they can get out. Sometimes we have to kick them out. Of course they are angry but we don't care."
Ahok (48 years) has served as Jokowi's right-hand man since winning the 2012 Jakarta gubernatorial election when the pair toppled the incumbent with their can-do, transparent ideas on fixing the many problems of the chaotic city, including chronic traffic and flooding.
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