Presidential election 2019: Decisive moments in democracy Indonesia

Presidential election 2019: Decisive moments in democracy Indonesia

Presidential election 2019 coming on April 17 will be the decisive moment in a democratic Indonesia. One reason for this victory, Prabowo or Jokowi can specify the gaps opportunities for young leaders to chair the Presidency in the year 2024. This year's vote also is expected to be the most divisive moment society Indonesia, with rampant attack each other between the candidate and the dissemination of hate speech and hoaks.

Five years ago, many saw the election contest between Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto as a fight between good and evil. In April 2019, both this man face to face again for the presidential elections. This time it seems more like a case where we have to choose the least bad.

In the year 2014, Jokowi campaigned with a promise to end the bureaucratic barriers that slow down the reform of democracy, making himself as a President who would represent the voice of the people. His candidacy sparked new hopes, manifested by the movement of volunteer enthusiasm from supporters, which slashed Indonesia community apathy towards the politicians.

Instead, Prabowo's blatant play authoritarian ideas. Present himself as a strong leader, former General pledged to restore Indonesia's status as the Asian Tigers, and threatened to dismantle the main pillars of democracy Indonesia including direct presidential elections.

Apart from the striking difference between them, Jokowi only win thin, with 53 against 47 percent difference.

Five years later, the difference between the two candidates is much more invisible. Jokowi not many use his mandate to revitalize democracy reforms, failed to stop the increasing religious polarization, and even show some tendency not an alarming liberal. However, the Jokowi entered the campaign Elections 2019 with the acquisition of voice leading. At the end of January, Jokowi is still superior in the poll, with a score of 55-35.

Jokowi surely realize that the fight is not yet over. But so far at least, the presidential election campaign was a bit quiet, 2019 is not yet showing a sharp polarization that extends the dreaded many observers.

Track record Jokowi

Three notable differences separate the campaign Jokowi and Prabowo in the year 2014. First, promising new ways of Jokowi and forward-looking in doing politics, while reference is often made to the former President Sukarno, Prabowo and Suharto indicated that he preferred to return to Indonesia of past authoritarian.

Second, the Government promises a Jokowi more open and accountable, while Prabowo found himself defending the two-party coalition is involved in a corruption scandal. Third, the Jokowi receives support mainly from the religious nationalist parties and moderate, making the pluralis koalisinya seems obvious. On the other hand, plays the Islamic card Prabowo with embracing conservative religious parties and groups of hard-line Islamist groups. Significantly, each of these differences have been eroded during first term Jokowi.

Shortly after the inauguration of the Jokowi, it becomes clear that he has no political support and personal commitment to push forward democratic reforms. Warm support from his party, PDI-P, and the minority coalition in the Parliament, making Jokowi repeatedly made a wise political appointment.

The nomination of Jokowi for Rusiru as Assistant by 2015 — to soothe his party's Chairman — is the most horrible example. Corruption eradication Commission (KPK) Indonesia has included Rusiru into the black list to become members of the Cabinet just three months earlier. In the end, the Jokowi had to cancel the appointment because of the political storm.

Instead, he welcomes other controversial figures including General Wiranto, Suharto's era to a Minelayer. The former Commander in Chief of the armed forces was appointed the Coordinating Minister for Political, law and security, although he was dismissed from the post of Minister of it because the charges against him in East Timor for crimes of war.

The designation of such encouraging supporters to argue that relationships, Prabowo was Prabowo with authoritarian new order period is now irrelevant."These comparisons are exaggerated ... There are figures of the new order which is now the leading decision makers in the two camps of the campaign, "Sekar Krisnauli, a media relations officer in the campaigns of Prabowo, told the author.

The fight against corruption also weakens under Jokowi, as Jokowi has been politicized and fails to protect the KPK. Jokowi was initially praised for requesting background checks the KPK members of Cabinet, but this role is dragging the KPK into the realm of politics than law enforcement, are politicized and prostrate.

PhD candidate at the Australian National University Tom Power, noting that the KPK has not demanded of PDI-P that protrudes under the current komisionernya, and argues that the Office of the Attorney General's Office has become more terpolitisasi under HM Joon — a senior politician from one of the coalition parties Jokowi. According to Power, the threat of prosecution was reported to have been used to force opposition figures including some Governors and mayors to support Jokowi.

Jokowi also did not protect the KPK from retaliation by his opponents. More than 18 months after KPK Novel investigator Baswedan lost sight in one eye after an acid attack near his home, no one was charged in this case.

The struggle against corruption has actually weakened under Jokowi. But on the issue of Islamism and pluralism, the difference between the two presidential candidates has eroded further and further. When Islamic groups criticized the rash statement by former Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (who was then better known as Ahok) at the end of 2016 and accused him of blasphemy, Jokowi moved away from his former political ally.
The measure of mobilization against Ahok seems to frighten Jokowi, as he fears his opponents will carry out the same massive attack on his own Islamic credibility in 2019. Jokowi himself attends a massive anti-Ahok rally and prayer meeting in December 2016, using the legitimacy of the presidency at the event. He also later approached the Chairman of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), Ma'ruf Amin, and finally made him a vice presidential candidate.

Jokowi's pragmatism has reduced his position among progressive civil society actors and made him criticized by foreign academics. But that did not disturb his position in the polls. Public perceptions of his leadership abilities, his performance as president, and his electability, initially declined during Jokowi's first nine months in office, but each has continued to increase since then. At the end of 2018, Jokowi did the same or better in each of these measures, compared to the beginning of his tenure.

Jokowi seems to have managed to avoid criticism of his track record for two different reasons. First, many Jokowi supporters who disagree with their policies see Jokowi's policies forced upon him, or his policies are still better than what could be expected under Prabowo's presidency.

Describing this argument, Ririn Sefsani, a Jokowi volunteer in 2014, argued that ‘Jokowi's strength was limited had no political party of his own, had no connection with the old elite and the military  but his hopes were high. Because of that, he must make a compromise. '

For Ririn, this kind of compromise was unavoidable and still better than Prabowo's presidency. "Victory for Prabowo," he said, "will be the death of democracy, the death of political rights, and the death of the dreams of Indonesian children from ordinary families to become presidents someday."

However, the second Jokowi support group seems to have been trapped with Jokowi because they actually agreed with his position. Although activists may hope that Jokowi will revitalize the reform narrative, in reality there is little evidence in a public opinion poll that the majority of Indonesians want Jokowi to take a firmer stance on issues such as human rights and pluralism. The main concern for most Indonesians is the economy, and Jokowi has adjusted his policy priorities during his first term.In fact, since coming to power, Jokowi has devoted much of his attention to improving Indonesia's notoriously poor infrastructure. Although there are some

serious setbacks - for example delays in the construction of the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railroad - but Jokowi can show some major achievements including several new ports, airports and road networks.

In addition, the main economic indicators have performed quite well, although overall economic growth has not reached the level that Jokowi promised when he took office. Most importantly, inflation has remained low for the past three years (around 3 percent), which is good news for Jokowi, because the recent history of Indonesian elections shows that incumbents tend to enjoy a high level of approval whenever inflation is low.

Jokowi: no longer an outsider

Jokowi's good economic track record coupled with achievements in health and education policies has made it difficult for Prabowo to find the right angle to attack incumbents. Prabowo has often disappeared from public view for a long time in the past five years. As Gerindra Leader, he prefers to hand over daily political matters to his party, stepping to the surface only during the 2017 Jakarta Governor Election.

However, Prabowo consistently topped the survey as the strongest challenger to challenge Jokowi in the 2019 presidential election, which in turn repeated the 2014 presidential election. But it remains to be seen whether the man who nearly won the 2014 presidential election will be a formidable opponent this time.

Of course, the beginning of Prabowo's campaign was calmer than it was five years ago. The aggressive population and rhetoric that won so much support in 2014 is still very much felt, but at least on certain occasions, Prabowo seems interested in appearing more like a statesman and calmer this time.

At the first presidential debate, he wore a suit and tie instead of a Soekarno-style safari suit like in 2014. In an effort to dampen the image of Prabowo, his cat also has an Instagram account at the end of 2018, uploading a mixture of funny cat photos and positive messages about Prabowo.

Prabowo's camp has also tried to focus back on their initial official campaign message. Employment and living costs have been voiced, as well as xenophobia and predictions of imminent disintegration of Indonesia. Candidate vice president Prabowo, a young US-educated billionaire Sandiaga Uno, seems to be much more comfortable with this campaign style than Prabowo. So far, Prabowo has given most of his campaigns to him.

The relatively calm start by Prabowo has sparked speculation about whether he is willing or able to lift his game in the rest of the campaign. One month before polling day, supporters remained optimistic that there was enough time to close the loophole in the vote.

In the view of Sekar Krisnauli, appearing more in the media, visiting voters more, and sending simpler messages, were all needed to encourage Prabowo to win.

Even though he did all this, however, Prabowo's problem might be that he no longer has a gold chest which sustains the strength of his campaign as in the 2014 presidential election. the party that officially supports it is not at all solid.

Former President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, for example, has so far refused to openly support Prabowo, and instead chose to campaign for his own Democratic Party, which is struggling to survive in the upcoming legislative elections in the future. Several leading provincial governors affiliated with Prabowo's parties even openly supported Jokowi.

In addition, the Prabowo campaign has experienced an initial setback. Hoaks like an attack on Ratna Sarumpaet (which was actually a plastic surgery and not due to a beating) encouraged widespread ridicule. Some hardline Islamic groups that have collaborated with Prabowo in 2017 to overthrow Ahok have left him after Prabowo refused to nominate one of them as his vice presidential candidate. Overall, it seems that Prabowo will face many obstacles before the election day on April 17.

What further worsened Prabowo's challenge, Jokowi was no longer an inexperienced local politician who entered the 2014 presidential election battle with limited support from oligarchs and party machinery. Now that he is incumbent, Jokowi not only has enormous political and material resources for vote protection and purchase, but he has also gathered a strong coalition of nine parties.

In addition, Jokowi believes that most traditionalist Muslims will vote for him after he appointed conservative cleric Ma'ruf Amin as his vice presidential candidate.

Not surprisingly then, Jokowi  like Prabowo  also changed his campaign style. For example, the blusukan activities that he used very effectively in 2014. In contrast, Jokowi is now more focused on his achievements in developing Indonesia's infrastructure and increasing access to health and education services. And if the public opinion survey is correct, the public seems to approve this approach.

Divisive voting?

But of course, that happened in 2014 too. At that time, Prabowo finally caught up with Jokowi, mainly because he turned the campaign into the most divisive in Indonesia's history recently, where supporters of each candidate displayed open insults with each other.

The nature of attack in this contest, attacks on social media, Prabowo's aggressive populism, and the introduction of dirty US-style campaigns all contributed to polarization. A divisive campaign only increased in the following years, with the rise of political hoaxes and polarized Jakarta Pilgub. Therefore, many observers fear that 2019 can be the most polarized election.

Of course, there is some evidence to support fears that this vote will sharpen the split. Social media attacks continue, with a condescending label that calls Jokowi's supporters cebong and followers of Prabowo as kampret.

More and more Indonesians are using the internet as a daily source of political news - tripled to 22 percent since 2014, according to the Indicator poll - which facilitates the spread of personal attacks and hoaxes. Religious polarization since the anti-Ahok campaign has not completely faded. And none of the camps avoided personal attacks against their opponents, which added to the campaign's heat.

However, at the same time, the Jokowi government also worked hard to try to prevent divisive elections. The appointment of Ma'ruf Amin - even if he is not Jokowi's first choice - is the clearest example of efforts to prevent sectarian campaigns. In addition, the government has taken a number of steps to curb online hate speech - many will say mainly because the hate speech is directed against the president or the government.

Elections that were hit by religious attacks were not in accordance with Jokowi. The government has launched a series of prosecutions against those who spread online hate speech material, under the Transaction and Electronic Information Act (ITE Law) which is often criticized.

The last landing behind bars was Ahmad Dhani, a musician who turned into a Gerindra politician, who in 2014 installed a music video to support Prabowo, who presented himself wearing a Nazi-style uniform. Other government critics - even if not affiliated with Prabowo - were also subjected to intimidation. In response, the Prabowo camp has since promised to revise the law to protect ordinary people to prevent them from being accidentally entangled.

Disappointed with the lack of choice, many voters have switched to innuendo and promised support for fictitious candidates Nurhadi and Aldo, who combine their names with the distinctive style of Indonesian politicians to produce the 'Dildo for Indonesia' campaign slogan. The fictional couple quickly gathered nearly 500,000 Instagram followers, and more than 100,000 followers on Twitter. The emergence of Dildo has fanned speculation that there will be a large number of abstentions in the 2019 Presidential Election.

Determining Moments?

With several weeks leading to the 2019 presidential election, voters who are hesitant still have plenty of time to make decisions. Their choice on 17 April may not be as striking as that seen in the 2014 Presidential Election, but the vote may be another decisive moment towards Indonesian democracy.

One reason, young leaders sharply awaited their chance to get a gap in the presidency in 2024. If Jokowi wins a second term, these politicians will have the opportunity. That might be a different story if Prabowo wins this time.

sumber:https://www.matamatapolitik.com/analisis-pilpres-2019-saat-saat-menentukan-dalam-demokrasi-indonesia/