One of Indonesia’s Most-Powerful Political Dynasties Just Lost In South Sulawesi

For years, there was only one name that mattered in South Sulawesi politics: Limpo.

The Limpo family, helmed by outgoing governor Syahrul Yasin Limpo, has been at the center of politics in South Sulawesi since Syahurl’s father, Muhammad Yasin Limpo, rose to power as the district chief of Gowa, a sprawling district of more than 650,000 on the southern tip of Sulawesi island.

Since then, more than a half-dozen members of the Limpo family have won elections in South Sulawesi, occupying positions in Gowa, on the Regional Legislative Council (DPRD), in the governor’s palace, and even in the House of Representatives.

It was Ichsan Yasin Limpo’s turn to run South Sulawesi after his brother, Syahrul, was required to step down once he ran out his term. Ichsan, a man who started out in the same place as his father, as district chief of Gowa, was angling to continue the family line. But then Nurdin Abdullah happened.

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Nurdin, a relative newcomer, stormed ahead in the polls, securing as much as 43.15 percent of the vote, according to unofficial quick count results that are typically seen as accurate enough to call an election in Indonesia. In the end, Nurdin’s main competition wasn’t even Ichsan himself, but another man named Nurdin, this one Nurdin Hallid, a powerful member of the Golkar Party. Ichsan came in a distant third behind the two Nurdins with an underwhelming 18.18 percent of the vote.

The election results were a sign that, after years of Limpo family dominance in South Sulawesi, voters were ready for someone new, said Risma Niswaty, a public policy expert at Universitas Negeri Makassar.

“In that moment, everything came together,” she said. “On top of that, there are numerous problems facing by the city, including traffic, flooding, and slow bureaucracy. So all the issues converged.”

But who is Nurdin and how did he beat not one, but two more experienced and better connected candidates? The man got his start in Bantaeng, a small district not too far from the birthplace of the Limpo dynasty. Both Gowa and Bantaeng are districts on the southern end of South Sulawesi, but with only 177,000 people spread across 395 square kilometers, Bantaeng is a fraction of the size of Gowa.

Still, it was a great start for Nurdin’s career. A bookish man with graying hair, Nurdin won the seat in 2008 after earning a PhD in agriculture from Japan’s Kyushu University and serving as the president director of several Japanese companies operating in Indonesia.

In Bantaeng, Nurdin quickly made a name for himself as an innovative leader with an knack for gaining the attention of the press. He made headlines when he told the district’s civil servants to ditch their polished Oxford shoes in favor of something more rugged, and far cheaper, because their fancy footwear made them reluctant to go out into the streets. He also banned government employees from driving expensive cars to work and helped with farmers to turn around the economic fortunes of a long-neglected province where subsistence farming was the norm.

By the time his first term was up, Nurdin had earned enough good will to win his 2013 re-election campaign with 83 percent of the vote. And, last year, his work to clean-up the government of his district and make its bureaucracy more streamlined and transparent won him the Bung Hatta Anti Corruption Award.

But his district still struggled with a rising poverty rate and high instances of child marriage, a serious issue in South Sulawesi, during his terms in office. Ichsan tried to score some points by slamming Nurdin over the issue in the debates, but Nurdin dismissed the matter as a mis-representation of what was actually happening on the ground.

“It’s the data that we need to evaluate,” he said, according to local media. “Because the roads in Bantaeng have improved.”

But what does his win mean for the future of South Sulawesi? Is this the beginning of the end for the Limpo dynasty?

No, not at all,” said Syamsuddin Alimsyah, the executive director of the Legistlative Monitoring Committee (Kopel). “Indeed they lost a strategic position, but still they have a lot. Syahrul Limpo is a member of DPR. His nephew is a bupati. And a lot of his family members are still commissioners in a lot companies. So the clan legacy will still go on and probably be back again in the next election.”