Political Party Competition Forgotten

Political parties will face the situation of having to compete and at the same time cooperate with their competitors. In the context of the presidential election, the norm of the political parties supporting Jokowi-Ma\'ruf and Prabowo-Sandiaga will work together to communicate their respective candidates.

KOMPAS/DIDIE SW

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The presidential and legislative elections to be held simultaneously in 2019 will be a new challenge for political parties.

They will face the situation of having to compete and at the same time cooperate with their competitors. In the context of the presidential election, the norm of the political parties supporting  Jokowi-Ma\'ruf Amin and Prabowo-Sandiaga Uno will work together to communicate their respective candidates. Not only that, political parties will also act carefully so as not to make blunders that could harm their candidates, including in refraining from mutually attacking political parties within their coalition.

The problem is that the logic of the legislative election forces political parties to compete with each other to convince their constituency base, influence voters who have not yet decided on their choice, or win over their competitor\'s voters. Political literature states several approaches are frequently  used by political parties to persuade voters− starting from playing sociological closeness (religion, ethnicity, age, class) to promoting policy issues, from emphasizing the attractiveness of the party as an organization to promoting the charm of their figures. Moreover, cooperation in the realm of the presidential election on paper does not produce balanced electoral benefits in the context of legislative elections. The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and especially the Gerindra Party are predicted to enjoy a large coattail effect because their members are presidential or vice presidential candidates. Ma\'ruf Amin might very well be able to attract an electoral addition to the National Awakening Party (PKB) or even the United Development Party (PPP).

Coalition costs

Political parties’ willingness to gather in a coalition to support presidential and vice presidential candidates is at least based on the motive of getting a portfolio in the Cabinet (office-seeking) or the opportunity to influence public policies (policy-seeking). Each political party has a different orientation. There are those that prioritize the first motive, there are also others that prefer the second.

Prioritizing one of these two motives assumes that political parties must compromise in the context of policy choices (because they must be adjusted to the visions and mission of the presidential-vice presidential candidates) and logically not disclose weaknesses, depravity, or differences in policy preferences. If the first has the potential to distance political parties from the preference of their voter base, the latter has the potential to make political parties even increasingly difficult to differentiate in their efforts to build unique positions in the minds of voters.

In short, political parties cannot optimally pursue the motive for getting as many votes as possible (vote-seeking). By looking at the composition of contesting candidates (Jokowi-Ma\'ruf and Prabowo-Sandi), most political parties seem to pursue office-seeking motives rather than vote-seeking or policy-seeking. Moreover, as reminded by Strom and Muller (1999), political parties have rarely had the opportunity to get the optimum results from the three motives because their characteristics tend to be trade-offs.

Of course, the orientation of choices has its consequences. Political parties whose votes are small (both winning and losing in the context of the presidential election) will suffer. Their political bargaining power is low and at the same time has to sacrifice their long-term interests, namely the ability to contest in the next general election. On the whole, it can be said that there are political costs that must be borne by the political parties because of gathering in the coalition. The political costs are not equal for every political party. To put it in a simple way, the farther the spectrum of figures and political promises of presidential and vice presidential candidates from their voters base preferences, the greater the costs they have to bear.

Maneuver to contest

Possibly coalition costs cannot be avoided, but political parties may still maneuver so that their electoral interests are maintained. The key to the maneuver lies in the ability to combine cooperation and competition at least in the three main elements of competition: figures, policy issues, social groups. The contestation of figures is focused on the presidential and vice presidential candidates. Competence, track record, and candidate personality will be the main content to attract voters. However, this attribute is not always a reference for voters. Sometimes voters choose candidates who have socio-demographic similarity, ideology, or other partisan identification with them (Marland, 2013).

The maneuvering room for most political parties is playing the second factor because the first factor is clearly enjoyed by Gerindra and PDI-P. Sandiaga\'s attributes as a representation of post-Islamist santri, for example, can be read as an effort by the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) to embrace Muslim voters, who feel they are no longer part of entrenched Islamic organizations such as NU and Muhammadiyah. On the other hand, Ma\'ruf\'s figure will be contested by PKB or PPP to consolidate their voter base in the nadhliyin (NU followers). Another room for maneuvering to compensate for the coat-tail effect is to promote figures representing the political parties. What has commonly been done is to prioritize the figures of general chairpersons as done by PKB, PPP, or United Indonesia Party (Perindo). Another route is by promoting new figures such as done by the Democratic Party with Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, who targets the young voter segment.

For political parties that have not prepared additional figures as an enhancing attractiveness in the eyes of the voters, the generic strategy is to apply the imitation moves and add other superior attributes (me too +1), to target the same voter share or specialize in certain voter groups. Whatever the choice, the figure must be associated as "the next leader". This frame will be the main vote gatherers and at the same time distinguish from the ordinary vote getters. The choice of the figure being floated must be carefully considered. The reason is because he will also act as an anchor in advancing political promises and also the social groups to be associated. The coherence of the three is important to build perceptions of credibility.

The policy issues to be carried out by the presidential and vice presidential candidates are the result of negotiations and compromise between the candidates and the political parties. In the context of the presidential election, political parties are bound to campaign them individually or jointly. However, in the context of the legislative election, political parties can maneuver by adapting, namely using the policy issues of the presidential-vice presidential candidates as campaign contents, but adding another dimension to strengthen them, make the unique, and be loved by the target voters. Other options as a complement, political parties can implement confrontation strategies or ignore them so as not to make them a public agenda.

As an initial illustration, the idea of a people-based economy raised by Ma\'ruf can be adapted by the supporting political parties by providing an emphasis on concrete sector-based or spatial-based programs, for example. PPP and PKB clearly have higher credibility because they are associated by the public as Islamic political parties than other political parties that support Jokowi-Ma\'ruf. Nevertheless, this can also be a new opportunity for nationalist political parties, such as the PDI-P, NasDem, or even Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI) to shift their image so that they are considered closer to the circles of Islamic voters. Its key lies in the skill of pushing the political programs which are appropriate, but do not eliminate the special characteristics of each of them.

On the contrary, for the coalition of political parties which support the Prabowo-Sandiaga like Gerindra or Democratic Party, the idea of a people-based economy can be collided with different ideas, for example, with the idea of people’s economy, Pancasila economy, market economy, or others. For PKS and National Mandate Party (PAN), for example, the strategy is to uncover the weakness of Ma\'ruf version of the people\'s economy and offer its own version. If this is done, PKS and PAN will inevitably fight for the most credible political parties to talk about the idea.

Generally, political parties tend to choose policy issues that they feel have a good reputation in the minds of voters (issue ownership) and these policy issues will be the ones to be highlighted during the campaign. The problem is that the issue ownership effect will be neutralized if the voters consider the policy issue to be insignificant (Belanger and Meguid, 2005). In other words, issue ownership alone is not enough to boost the votes in the general election. To overcome this, political parties must contest to  each other to build relevant contexts so that their policy issues are considered important by the voters.

Contestation space in this domain is relatively wide because political parties generally do not have strong issue ownership. Even if there exists, as in the case of the PKS with solidarity with Palestine, it is not necessarily considered relevant in the context of legislative elections.

Another maneuvering room is the willingness to get out of a generic policy issue which sometimes stops simply as a jargon. Themes such as foreign debts, food imports, energy subsidies, or corruption eradication are classified in this category. On the contrary, political parties can highlight daily issues, such as BPJS funding, new student admissions, online transportation, and at the same time make them issues that are inherent in them. The political parties supporting Prabowo-Sandiaga have more opportunities to explore this because at the same time they can criticize the performance of the incumbent government. On the contrary, political parties supporting Jokowi-Ma\'ruf must find ways to show their commitment on these issues and or offer new solutions.

Other contestation maneuvers are more aggressive, namely revealing the two faces of political parties. The open faces of political parties are what are stated in the vision and mission and program. Other faces are what are agreed upon by the elite of political parties and internal activists of the related  political parties (Hammel et al, 2005). Moreover, this double faces cannot only be revealed from the political party manifesto, but also between public statements and their internal decisions. Neglecting the results of the ijtima of ulemas on Prabowo\'s vice presidential candidate is an example of how this strategy is played out. Therefore, political parties supporting Jokowi-Ma\'ruf do need to work smarter, but remain within the existing legal corridor.

The connection between political parties and social groups remains relevant in pushing up the electoral level of political parties, even though it must be admitted that their influence is not as high as previously because of being mediated by the figure factor. Besides continuing to elaborate social groups that are the bases of the traditional voters, political parties can create and or highlight new social groups as their new bases. In the UK, the Conservative Party and Labor Party, other than traditional constituents, also try to attract new social groups, such as families and parents (Thau, 2017).

Anticipation

Whatever the choice of contestation maneuvers, political parties need to consider these two things, first the tendency of voter behavior to do split ticket voting. At the first level, split ticket voting occurs when voters choose party A for the House of Representatives (DPR), but political parties B or C for the Provincial/Municipal Legislative Councils (DPRDs). On the second level, split ticket voting occurs because they choose the presidential-vice presidential candidate, who is not supported by the political parties they choose for the legislative election.

The second is the latent agenda of fellow political parties. Its norm is whatever the choice to be chosen to compete undoubtedly must pay attention to the main agenda of the coalition: winning the presidential-vice presidential candidate pair being promoted. However, this norm can be violated if the main agenda of a political party is far greater than that: promoting itself by utilizing the momentum of the presidential election. They do not hesitate to attack friends as if it is considered commensurate with the electoral benefits that can be achieved. For the type of such political parties, winning the presidential election is only a bonus. This applies especially to political parties that do not place their cadres as presidential/vice presidential candidates or feel that the benefits of public positions being offered will not be adequate for their objectives.

Congratulations on competing!

Yunarto Wijaya, Executive Director of Charta Politika Indonesia