Depok 2020 Pilkada: Can PKS Domination Be Overthrown?

Photo illustration of Depok City (Source: Antara)

JAKARTA - The 2020 Depok Pilkada has become a battleground for 2 incumbent candidates who choose to separate beds to fight for power. Depok Mayor Mohammad Idris' camp teamed up with Imam Budi Hartono, a PKS cadre. Meanwhile, Deputy Mayor of Depok, Pradi Supriatna, teamed up with PDI-P cadre Afifah Alia. The question is can the PDI-P camp defeat the PKS stronghold which has been in power in the city of Belimbing since the city was founded alone?

Mohammad Idris is a non-party group close to PKS. He is trying to return to the position of mayor of Depok, together with his running mate, Imam Budi Hartono, who has been sitting in the West Java DPRD for 2 terms.

Idris-Imam is only promoted by a coalition of three PKS, Democrat and PPP parties, plus one non-parliamentary party, Berkarya. However, as we know, PKS has dominated Depok for a long time since the city held its first direct election in 2005.

Meanwhile, Idris's challenger who is his representative in the current government, Pradi Supriatna, chose to remove his former partner by cooperating with Afifah Alia. Afifah is a female PDI-P cadre who failed to qualify as a member of the DPR in the 2019 legislative elections.

Even though his opponents were difficult, Pradi had huge assets to shake the power of the PKS camp: the fat coalition. Unmitigated, he was promoted by six parties, namely Gerindra, PDI-P, Golkar, PAN, PKB and PSI.

Chances of winning

The Pradi-Afifah duo with a fat coalition has the potential to defeat the PKS regime in Depok. This can be seen from the results of a recent survey which showed the pair was superior.

The Election Monitoring Institute, Democracy And Electoral Empowerment Partnership (DEEP) recently released the results of a survey of candidates for mayor and deputy mayor in the 2020 Pilkada Depok. Idris-Imam who only got 47.8 percent.

The survey method is not too good, because it only shares forms on social media using Google Forms. However, the number of respondents from the study, which began on October 24 to November 4, was quite a lot, namely 2,684 people.

Respondents are also spread across 11 sub-districts in Depok City. So that the survey can be used as input for the two candidates for the time being.

Pradi's belief in shifting the PKS Idris regime also emerged from the Political Expert of UIN Syarif Hidayatullah, Adi Prayitno. Adi said that Pradi had strong capital because apart from being the incumbent, he was also supported by two major parties: Gerindra and PDIP.

"Even though Pradi is currently a representative, he has the potential to defeat Idris, because both are incumbents and both know the kitchen of each other's political struggles," said Adi as quoted by Merdeka.

According to Adi, the two major parties have a lot of resources to win the battle. "Gerindra and PDIP have everything to win the battle. The match experience is yes (in the 2014 and 2019 elections), the ruling party (at the national level) and the incumbent candidates," he said.