Only Provoking Emotion

KOMPAS/WISNU WIDIANTORO

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo (second left) and running mate Ma\'ruf Amin (left) share a light moment with Gerindra Party chairman Prabowo Subianto (second right), who is running for president with Sandiaga Uno (right) as his vice-presidential pick, at a pledge for a peaceful campaign that was held at the National Monument (Monas) in Central Jakarta on Sunday. The declaration aims to combat hoaxes, hate speech as well as ethnic, religious, racial and societal group (SARA) sentiments to create a peaceful atmosphere for the 2019 presidential election.

Campaign activities have been taking place for nearly a month. However, the presidential candidates are still offering big narratives to the public. This nation needs positive narratives.

The campaign period is still being colored by the two sides attacking each other with phrases composed by the two presidential candidates or their success teams. Besides “lie politics”,  there is also “sontoloyo (silly) politics”. The government’s claim that the poverty rate is falling is responded to with the phrase “the lives of the people are still mediocre”. There are also candidates who try to associate themselves with the great figures of the past. These candidates seem not to be confident with themselves so they have to use the popularity or charisma of statesmen or the founding fathers of this nation.

The “talking about themselves” campaign seems to imitate the campaign technique of Donald Trump, when he competed against Hillary Clinton in the United States general election. The main thing is that their narratives become news and remain in the top of minds. Fake news and defamation, which threaten the integration of the nation, only provoke emotion, raising the militancy of the supporters and only further increasing polarization in the community.

How does the public react to such a campaign model? The results of a poll by Kompas on Oct. 15, 2018, suggest that the community longs for quality campaigns. The majority of the respondents (over 80 percent) did not know and had never read the mission statement of the presidential and vice presidential candidate pairs. As many as 80 percent of respondents did not even know the main programs of each candidate and how they will execute them.

In conjunction with the commemoration of the 90^th year of the Youth Pledge, Oct. 28, 2018, we want to encourage the candidates and their teams to have big narratives about Indonesian-ness. Narratives that are able to maintain the unity and integrity of the nation, not the other way round, by emphasizing issues that have the potential to lead to the disintegration of the nation.

The public hope that the presidential candidates offer policies or alternative policies from the opposition side, which will be implemented to solve the acute problems of the nation such as corruption. The mission statement of Prabowo Subianto and Sandiaga Uno deals with indiscriminate law enforcement and salary hikes of legal enforcers. That of Joko Widodo and Ma’ruf Amin offers improvement of the existing system. They also want to strengthen the position of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

The question is, will the mission statement be adequate to eradicate corruption in this country? Of course not because of the absence of significant solutions. There are no ideas, for example, to issue government regulations in lieu of law (Perppu), which ensure the revocation of the political right for any state organizers involved in corruption cases, ensure the confiscation of private assets and implement social works for corruption perpetrators, and enforce the obligation to carry out transactions through the banking industry in certain amounts.

The solutions of the candidates deserve to be discussed jointly with the public for the sake of the creation of more productive and qualified campaigns and are intended to solve the main problems of the nation.