Nurul Faqiriah
Indonesia will hold legislative and presidential elections on 14th February 2024. Three pairs of candidates will participate in this election, namely Anies Baswedan-Muhaimin Iskandar, Prabowo Subianto-Gibran Rakabuming and Ganjar Pranowo-Mahfud MD. Interestingly, millennials and Gen Z will be dominant voters, about 56% of the total. Frequently, all presidential candidates compete to attract attention with various campaign promises, often prioritizing young people. They also use gimmicks on social media.
Baswedan is campaigning by means of dialogue, which involves the young generation through Desak Anies, which means Pressure Anies. On this forum, each audience member is allowed to ask questions freely. He also actively attends dialogue invitations from numerous universities to explain his vision and mission. Since December until now Baswedan has been doing TikTok live regularly; on this live, he does not campaign directly but is more likely to share inspirational stories and motivations. His vice candidate, Iskandar, does routine events with teenagers named Slepet Imin; Iskandar is also doing political gimmicks.
Ganjar Pranowo did the same thing. Pranowo has held several public dialogues involving young people every Saturday night. He also frequently attended public dissemination on many campuses. In order to entice the younger generation, Pranowo popularized the Finger Salute, like in the Hunger Games film. Pranowo defines three fingers as obeying God, obeying the law and being loyal to the people. This three-finger action is a trend among supporters and has flooded FYP TikTok. Besides that, Pranowo’s vice candidate, Mahfud MD, also lived on TikTok on New Year’s Eve.
Meanwhile, Subianto seemed only come fewer times to the public discussions which universities and institutions held; despite not being as often as the two other candidates, Subianto obtained lots of support from youngsters. It can be seen from many youth communities that have declared their endorsement to Subianto. Regarding gimmicks, Subianto is known as joget gemoy, which means adorable dance. At various events, he often dances, which attracts attention. This dance went viral on social media.
Generally, all candidates offer fascinating ideas and concepts in multisector, such as small and medium enterprises (SME), stunting prevention, education, health, and economy. However, can their ideas influence voters instead of gimmicks?
Political Gimmick Vs Notion, which one seems appealing for youngsters?
Indonesia is the biggest social media user in the world. According to We Are Social Report, Indonesia’s Instagram users reached 103,3 million, while X (Twitter) users were about 27,5 million in October 2023. Making Indonesia the fourth largest country Instagram and X user in the world. In addition, about 106,51 million people in Indonesia are Tiktok users. Placing Indonesia at the second rank of the biggest TikTok users in the world.
Needless to say, social media has been becoming a battleground amongst candidates, especially on TikTok. Funny videos of all candidates are usually modified by proponents with trendy music and editing style. In a certain sense, it could influence public opinion, mainly swing and undecided voters. Utilizing gimmicks for campaigns may be more acceptable in an apathetic community.
According to the General Elections Commission, 32% of Indonesian youngsters are apathetic towards politics. Obviously, this number is not significant; around 68% of young Indonesians still believe in political institutions.
The latest survey from the Public Opinion and Discussion Group, released in December 2023, discovered that about 39,5 % of the young generation consider the vision and mission very crucial, and another 29.8% consider it important. Meanwhile, 27% of respondents thought it was unimportant, and 3.6% said it was very unimportant.
All Presidential candidates have used the media not only to carry out gimmicks but also to spread ideas and concepts in various interesting ways. Baswedan, for example, regularly upload infographics with an eye-catching appearance containing the vision and mission on instagram feeds. Subianto also often packages his vision and mission using AI. Meanwhile, Pranowo often upload reels to convey his vision and mission.
Young people who think vision and mission are not important tend to be easily influenced by black campaigns, hoaxes and disinformation spread in the media. However, the track record is also prominent. The three candidates running in the upcoming election had experience in the government sector. Baswedan is a former minister of education and culture and governor of DKI Jakarta. Pranowo was also a former member of parliament and governor of Central Java, while Subianto is active defense minister since 2019 until present.
A survey from Public Opinion and Discussion Group found that 32.2% of young people think track record is essential, 28% said it is important, and 26.7% think it is not important. The rest think it is very unimportant. This means that almost 50% of young Indonesians still need to pay attention to the candidate’s track record. Whereas track record is important to look at in making choices, including how the policies they have made and their impact on society.
Can we rely on young voters?
Lately, youth movement in Thailand and Myanmar has raised hopes for a better democracy. For example, the student protests in Thailand against the authoritarian regime and the civil disobedience movement caused by the military coup in Myanmar, which young people dominated, indicate that young people took sides towards democracy and the public interest.
Indonesia’s youth movement is attractive as well. In 2019, students from many universities protested through the Reformasi Dikorupsi, which was the biggest protest after the reformation in 1998. This demonstration not only occurred in capital city such as Jakarta, but spread all over cities.
This protest sparked optimism that Indonesian youth cognize the problems they face. In the last six years, Indonesia has experienced democracy decline. Freedom House data showed that in 2016, Indonesia’s democracy ranking was in 65th position, this figure has decreased quite significantly to 58 in 2022. This makes Freedom House placing Indonesia as a partly freedom country.
Indonesia has Electronic Information and Transaction Law (EIT). This law contains ambiguous clauses, which are usually used to silence freedom of expression. Research from the Law Reformation Institution reported that almost 700 people were imprisoned due to ambiguous clauses from 2016 to 2020. The majority of victims came from activists and civil society. Furthermore, the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute stated that ten journalists were reported on charges of violating the EIT Law in 2020.
Despite EIT law being revised and legalized on 4th January 2024, the fact of the matter is that this law still embodies elastic clauses. According to Journalist Independent Alliance (JIA), changes to the law still retain problematic clauses such as those commonly used to criminalize civilians and gag criticism.
Furthermore, Indonesia’s government has an ambitious project in terms of development, the government officially moved the capital from Jakarta to East Kalimantan. The relocation of the capital city was officially passed into law in January 2022. This policy also received protests from students. In their action on September 12 2022, students asked the government to postpone the relocation of the capital. Even indigenous peoples who live around the new capital city construction point are challenging this law at the Constitutional Court. They reckoned that the formation of this law did not involve public participation. In spite of this law was revised and officially passed in October 2023, yet according to Greenpeace, the government did not revise clauses related to environmental protection, biodiversity and indigenous communities.
Unfortunately, parliament also no longer provides its duties as checks and balances. In Widodo’s second term, the opposition increasingly weakened. In the first period of Widodo’s government (2014-2019) the number of coalition parties in parliament was 60.17%. However, in the second period (2019-2024) the number of coalitions reached 81.9% of the total 575 seats in the parliament. There are only two opposition parties, namely the Democrats and Prosperous Justice Party. This situation makes problematic policies have no control and run ineffective.
From all the above-mentioned problems, the demonstration movement, which is predominantly dominated by students and civil society, has a vital role in checks and balances. With 56% of millennials and Gen Z voters, this election is a momentum to elect candidates who are believed to be able to solve various problems such as corruption, law enforcement and strengthening democracy.
Interestingly, the incumbent did not participate in this election. The three competing candidates have different taglines.
Baswedan proposes changes. The changes offered are revising the Corruption Eradication law , evaluating the capital city law and guaranteeing freedom of expression, reducing the economic gap, and promoting re-industrialization.
Subianto offers continuity. He committed to continue President Widodo’s programs. Subianto is determined to continue downstreaming and build a new capital city. Subianto also planned a free lunch and milk program for students.
Meanwhile, Pranowo carries the concept of improvement and sustainability. Pranowo is committed to carrying forward new capital city construction, downstreaming and development programs. However, Pranowo also promised to correct President Widodo’s program, which he deemed inappropriate. They promised to strengthen law enforcement. His vice candidate, Mahfud, also pledged to restore the old corruption eradication law if they were elected.
Amid various concepts offered by candidates, only rational voters think critically before making a choice
Lack of political education in Indonesia
If we look back, protests towards the government were mostly carried out by students from multifarious universities who were sensitive to social issues. In fact, the Central Statistics Agency report in March 2023 stated that only around 10% of Indonesia’s population had successfully completed college, 30.22% of the population were high school graduates, and 22.74% were junior high school graduates. The rest are elementary school graduates and do not have a graduate certificate. Of course, the level of education can influence voters’ perspectives in responding to various issues.
Political education in Indonesia is still lacking, normally they only get in-depth courses on politics only at college, not junior high school or senior high school. Even though elementary, middle and high schools in Indonesia have civic education subjects, this is not effective enough to increase students’ awareness and critical thinking regarding politics. Thus, many young people are still apathetic and assume that the presidential election has no influence on daily life.
On the other hand, only a tiny number of voters are rational voters. Research results from the National Research and Innovation Agency, based on research results in the 2014-2019 elections, rational voters are only 5-10% of the total population. The majority of rational voters are middle-upper class and well-educated. Meanwhile, emotional voters choose presidential and vice presidential candidates based on likes and dislikes.
It is compounded by the quantity of artists and influencers who endorse presidential candidates. All candidates hire influencers with huge followers on social media accounts to increase their popularity. It could deceive voters, especially beginner voters. They tend to look at their favorite influencers as a reference for whom they will vote for. Apart from that, fewer TikTok content creators did street interviews and asked millennials and Gen Z to whom they would vote and the reason. Unexpectedly, fewer respondents argue they will vote Subianto because of cuteness and for those who will vote Pranowo or Baswedan because they are cool. Obviously, the number of respondents is small, and we cannot take it as a sample. Nevertheless, we can see the urgency of government to supply political knowledge.
Indonesia is the biggest democratic country in the world, with a huge population. Indonesia is forecasted to face a demographic dividend from 2030 to 2040. It could be an opportunity for Indonesia to accelerate development. However, Indonesia must enhance human resources, not only in economic sector but political education too.
Writer is International Relations Graduate at Universitas Islam Indonesia. Nurul has great interest in Democracy in Southeast Asia, and Social Movements