IN A gaggle of photographers, assorted hangers-on and just three security guards, a slight figure in a white shirt descends on Benhil, a dilapidated market in central Jakarta. Joko Widodo, known to all as Jokowi, is engaging in what has been a daily activity since he became the city's governor in October 2012: blusukan, or an unannounced spot-check. The market is to be redeveloped. Besides buying some mangoes and more white shirts, Jokowi wants to know if the stallholders are happy about how the project is being handled. They seem to be - and are thrilled to hobnob with the most popular politician in the country. Blusukan, a habit Jokowi acquired as mayor of Solo, a small city in central Java, is a novelty in a country where politicians are usually glimpsed, if at all, on a distant rostrum. One of the reasons he is so popular is that he seems humble and approachable and to care about the views of those affected by his decisions. But to the casual observer, his daily plunges into a bath of popular affection look like a more traditional political activity: an election campaign. And indeed, many expect Jokowi to be Indonesia's next president, after a five-yearly election to be held in July. In fact, Jokowi is not yet even a candidate. Asked about it, he repeats the simple retort: I don't want to think about it. But opinion polls consistently show him as the front-runner, by a distance. One published this month in Kompas, a national daily, showed him winning 43% of the popular vote, four times as many as the runner-up, Prabowo Subianto, a former general, and even further ahead of Aburizal Bakrie, the candidate of Golkar, once the party of Suharto, the dictator who fell in 1998. The Democratic Party, led by Indonesia's president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who reaches the limit of his term this year, has yet to choose its nominee. Jokowi's enemies must have hoped that his popularity would not survive the bruising experience of running Indonesia's biggest city. Jakarta seems much the same congested, dirty, flood-prone place it was when he took over. And for all the effort he has put into dredging canals, rivers and reservoirs, the city this week marked the rainy season in traditional fashion: with floods that displaced thousands of people. As for the traffic, things may actually get worse before they get better. But on his watch two long-stalled public-transport projects - a monorail and an underground system - have been approved. And 15 months on, he is, if anything, more popular than ever. The spotlight likes him. Some of his actions are obvious crowd-pleasers: he introduced smartcards that give the poor access to free health care and education, and in 2012 he raised the minimum wage by 44%. But other decisions have been brave. In 2013 he faced protests when the minimum wage went up only 9%. And he resisted pressure to move a Christian subdistrict head from the solidly Muslim residential area where she had been appointed. Tellingly, he was able to argue that she had come top in the tests he had introduced. The main reason for his enduring appeal, though, is the blusukan approach and the perception that he has remained uncorrupted by high office. For the most part, Jokowi is a sharp contrast to the portly, dignified and rather aloof Mr Yudhoyono. But he has this in common with the president (at least when Mr Yudhoyono won election in 2004): that in a political system corrupt from top to bottom, his hands are believed to be clean. So, barring some unforeseen scandal or the emergence of a new political star, all that can stop Jokowi's accession to the presidency seems to be his own reluctance to throw his hat in the ring. Many foreigners as well as Indonesians hope he will. He is the only serious contender to have emerged from Indonesia's democratic present rather than its authoritarian past. Until he campaigned in Solo in 2005, he had run a furniture business. Under Indonesia's system, to run for the presidency he would need the support of a party or coalition with at least 20% of the popular vote or 25% of the seats in parliamentary elections to be held in April. That should not be a problem. He is a member of one of the big political forces, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the descendant of the party founded by Indonesia's leader at independence, Sukarno, and now led by the great man's daughter, Megawati Sukarnoputri. She, surely, must realise what a boon Jokowi is for the PDI-P. Several other parties are said to have sounded him out about jumping ship. However, she has not yet anointed him. They meet often, but when it is in public, the body language is analysed in agonising detail in the press. At a gathering on January 10th, for example, was she bestowing her blessing when he put her right hand on his forehead in a traditional gesture of deference? Not at all, he said. The questions betray suspicions that factions within the PDI-P are resisting his rise, that Miss Megawati fears that by naming him she would be rendering herself irrelevant, and that she has perhaps not given up all hopes of another tilt of her own at the presidency, which she held from 2001-04, perhaps with Jokowi as a vice-presidential running-mate. Despite denials she plans to run, the failure to nominate Jokowi fuels speculation. The party has said it will not make its nomination until after the parliamentary election due in April. Wait-and-see politics This approach has its advantages. As a declared candidate, the front-runner would be the main target of all his rivals and face tougher scrutiny. As a humble provincial governor, he can avoid questions about, for example, foreign policy. Delaying has drawbacks, too, however. The PDI-P vote in the parliamentary election may suffer unless the party can somehow benefit from a halo effect without actually canonising Jokowi. And voters and the outside world are left guessing not only about why this engaging man might want the presidency of a country of 250m people, but what might happen if he were to win it.