According to the State Research Institute a total of 124 candidate pairs affiliated with political dynasties will be running in the simultaneous election of regional heads on December 9.
They comprise 57 candidate regents and 30 candidate deputy regents, 20 candidate mayors and eight candidate deputy mayors and five candidate governors and four candidate deputy governors. Broken down by gender there are 67 men and 57 women candidates. Out of the 57 women, 29 are wives of incumbent regional heads.
"One-hundred and twenty-four political dynasty candidates are spread evenly across 270 regional districts", said State Research Institute Director Akbar Faisal in a press release on October 12.
According to the Institute, there are two kinds of patterns in the candidacies from political dynasties.
First, candidates who are backed by presidents or senior government officials such as President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo's oldest son Gibran Rakabuming and the president's son-in-law Bobby Nasution.
Second, incumbents who nominate wives as candidates such as the wife of Azwar Annas who is running for election in Banyuwangi. The institute said there are 29 wives of incumbents running in the December poll.
The Institute also noted that there are electoral districts were political dynasties are competing with each other such as South Tangerang, which is being contested by the daughter of Vice President Ma'ruf Amin, a cousin of Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto and a relative of Banten Governor Ratu Atut.
In terms of provinces, South Sulawesi has the largest number of candidates from political dynasties with a total of 12, followed by North Sulawesi with 11, Central Java with 10 and East Java with nine.
The Golkar Party had the largest number of candidates from political dynasties with 12.9 percent, followed by the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) with 12.4 percent and the National Democrat Party (NasDem) with 10.1 percent.
The institute said that there has been a drastic increase in the number of candidates from political dynasties since 2015 after the Constitutional Court struck down a clause in the election law which barred family members of an incumbent from running as regional heads.
