Most major politicians these days have a Facebook page in which to engage their supporters, but most of the time those pages are run by their public relations / social media managers. Supporters often go on to such pages to write comments directly to the politician in hopes of getting an answer, but it almost never happens.

Almost.

Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama was a rare exception to the rule yesterday when he went into the comments section of his Facebook page to directly address one of the comments.

The post was a video of Ahok doing a photoshoot required as part of his registration process for the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election.

Very soon after the post went up, a Facebook user named Hikmah Munawar Khotib wrote:

“Pak Ahok please help us, we citizens of Jatinegara are having great difficulty getting our e-KTPs, already 3 days we have gone back and forth [from the e-KTP office] and have not gotten a place in line. Do we have to bribe the officials before they serve us? This isn’t the era of bribery anymore is it? Now this is the era of Pak Ahok, a time of good governance… Please reply quickly pak, think of the grandfathers and grandmothers..”.

As you are hopefully aware, the government has given Indonesians until mid-2017 to obtain their new e-KTP cards, and Hikmah is hardly the only person to have complained about unprofessional behavior at the e-KTP offices in Jakarta.



But surprisingly, Hikmah’s message somehow reached Ahok (we’re guessing he doesn’t always read all the comments on his Facebook page) and the governor took to the comments section himself to ask:

“Do you have a contact number?”

Hikmah never responded publicly to Ahok, but we’re hoping he messaged him his mobile number. Meanwhile the rest of the comments were mostly in awe that Ahok would actually respond to a comment like that on Facebook (something he has not been known to to do in the past).

However, Ahok is known to frequently listen directly to problems from citizens at City Hall and he often acts quickly to try and resolve them. Last week, a man from Tambora told Ahok that the mayor of West Jakarta, Annas Effendi, helped to illegally evict him from his home. Ahok directly called the Annas on the spot and now an investigation into the eviction is underway.

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