The scenery you see in this picture located in the governor office of Jakarta, recently in May 2017. The current governor, is a Chinese Christian, named Basuki Tjahaja a.k.a Ahok. He just lost Jakarta’s Governor Election that could give him the second chance of being the governor of mega-city Jakarta. Despite of his lost, he got alot of fans from all over the nation, inside and outside Jakarta. The demographic of his loyal followers are young educated people, middle and upper classes, minority (including christians and Chinese defendants), and everybody who sees the good of his govern. He is also never really show any religious attribute, and very approachable. The way he talked is very straight forward, and that what made him like able to young people.
The fans of Ahok is known for their creative force. Ever since the campaign started, Ahok branding is across so many platforms. After his lost though, the fans got outside of social medias and decided to started this One Thousand Flowers for Ahok as a symbol of appreciation to the governor. Now, the amount of flower arrangement collected in the governor office are more than 7000.
For foreign people this flower arrangement might be a little “big” and unique. Yes, this flower arrangement is not common elsewhere. This is called Steekwerk, or Flower Board. The word itself is dutch. It mean flower stems stuck up together into an arrangement. It used to be stuck up into a bamboo, or empty wall, but during the time, florist use styrofoam as the platform. Now the styrofoam served as a message board and the flowers are the frame.
The purpose of this flower board is like a greeting card for big and meaningful events such as weddings, funerals, or a grand opening. But in this case, Ahok fans used flower board to convey heartbroken words for his lost and some thankful messages. The message tho, were not as common as before. The choice of words in this case are more youthful with the use of more slang words. Some are very funny. This motivates other Ahok fans to make funnier boards. Soon after that, this phenomenon was somehow being a creative platform of people expressions.
This, is a good example of how creative people force meets old media.
