JAKARTA The decision of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) to carry the pair Anies Baswedan as a candidate for governor (readgub) and Mohammad Sohibul Iman as candidates for deputy governor (readawagub) of the Jakarta Special Region 2024 was surprising. According to observers, PKS carried out a political blunder or a great political scheme.

The decision was conveyed by PKS President Ahmad Syaikhu at the opening of the Party Leadership School in Jakarta, Tuesday (25/6/2024).

"The DKI Jakarta PKS DPW structure has previously proposed several names of candidates for the Governor of the Special Region of Jakarta to the PKS DPP, including Mr. Anies Rasyid Baswedan and Mr. Mohamad Sohibul Iman," said Syaikhu as quoted from the official PKS website.

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Ahmad Syaikhu explained that the reason his party agreed to carry Anies Baswedan was because the former Minister of Education succeeded in building Jakarta during the 2017-2022 period governorship with various achievements in various development sectors.

Meanwhile, Sohibul Iman was chosen because he has qualified credibility as a technocrat and scholar who was once the rector of Paramadina University.

The PKS announcement that the Anies Baswedan-Sohibul Iman pair was quite surprising. Prior to this, the news that was circulating stated that PKS would not carry Anies, although there was actually no official statement from the party regarding this matter.

Anies himself is more often associated with the PDI-P (PDIP) ahead of the 2024 Simultaneous Pilkada.

The party bearing the symbol of sickle and rice first announced Sohibul's name as the Jakarta governor's reading on Sunday (23/6/2024). But two days later, PKS uploaded an Anies-Sohibul poster on the party's official social media account.

Socio-political analyst at the Institute for Security and Strategic Studies (ISESS) Musfi Romdoni highlighted the PKS decision which eventually brought Anies-Sohibul in the 2024 Jakarta gubernatorial election. Musfi said, when PKS first brought Sohibul Iman as a cagub at the end of last week, it was interpreted as diverse by many parties.

Some saw it as a sign that PKS wanted to separate ways from Anies and there were also those who said that PKS was offered a ministerial seat to release support from Anies.

In fact, according to Musfi, these assumptions were automatically denied because PKS had never issued a statement that he would leave Anies. PKS actually gave two options, between Anies being a PKS cadre or a PKS cadre who was chosen as Anies' representative in the Jakarta gubernatorial election.

"In other words, Sohibul Iman's investigation is political blundering. And it's true, on Tuesday, June 25 or two days later, PKS uploaded an Anies-Sohibul poster on the party's official social media account. This shows the political scheme launched by PKS was a huge success," said Musfi.

Even though it is a winning party, PKS cannot carry the Anies-Sohibul pair alone. In other words, PKS must form a coalition with other parties.

PKS is currently registered as the party with the most seats in Jakarta, which is 18 seats. But political parties must have 22 seats in the DPRD to be able to carry the candidate pair for governor and deputy governor in the 2024 Jakarta Pilkada. These conditions are contained in Law (UU) Number 10 of 2016 concerning Pilkada.

Thus, PKS still needs four more seats to be able to carry Anies-Sohibul as Cagub and Cawagub Jakarta 2024.

So far, there have been three parties that have the potential to collaborate with PKS in the 2024 DKI Jakarta gubernatorial election, namely PKB, NasDem, and PDIP.

With a situation like this, Dedi Kurnia Syah, Executive Director of the Indonesia Political Opinion or IPO said, it was rather difficult for PKS partners to carry Anies-Sohibul. He considered the possibility that only PKB or NasDem would form a coalition.

"On the one hand, PKB has been accepted by PKS to carry Muhaimin Iskandar as a vice presidential candidate in their coalition, while NasDem does not have a strong enough figure to offer," said Dedi when contacted by VOI.

"So, Anies can be accepted both by PKB and NasDem," he added.

The dilemma position was actually experienced by PDIP, according to Dedi, because previously the party, which Megawati Soekarnoputri had been linked to Anies Baswedan.

"The problem is that PDIP, in general PDIP should deserve the position of cawagub, even though PKS is far more appropriate because it dominates in Jakarta. So this is indeed a dilemma," explained Dedi.

"It is possible that PDIP will run alone by building a new coalition, so that the Jakarta Pilkada will look like in the presidential election, but this results will also replicate the presidential election, while PDIP tends to try to beat the Gerindra coalition," he continued.

PDIP DPP chairman Eriko Sotarasuga said that no political party can carry its own candidate in the 2024 Jakarta Pilkada. He believes that the PKS decision to carry Anies-Sohibul can still be negotiated, so he must look for political parties that want to participate in carrying it.

According to Dedi, PDIP could finally give up and give up the cawagub seat to belong to PKS. Because basically they also have an interest in defeating the Advanced Indonesia Coalition (KIM), which is a supporter of Prabowo Subianto-Gibran Rakabuming Raka in the 2024 presidential election. If this happens, the chance for Anies to return to lead Jakarta is very large.

"The situation could have built PDI-P to give in to join PKS, in order to beat KIM, if the coalition only had cars, it was very likely that Anies' camp would win in Jakarta," said Dedi.


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