Elections Are Not a Seasonal Party

Elections are not a five-year party, but a process to produce leaders with integrity and a sovereign people.

Procedurally, the election ends when the General Election Commission determines the results. Determining the winner is the culmination of all the dynamics of electoral politics with its various records. However, this procedural determination does not immediately answer the substantive problems that cause the process of implementing elections (democracy) to experience degradation.

Several survey results and findings from institutions that are concernabout democracy, such as the V-Dem Institute, confirm this tendency degradation of democracy (Kompas.com i>, 5/26/2023). The Indonesian Survey Institute also shows the same phenomenon, namely a decrease in the level of public satisfaction with the implementation of the 2024 election (Kompas.com, 25/2/2024).

The dark notes of democracy are often erased by the charm of victory that seems to forgive all problems. Moreover, ending with a coalition implies that all wounds have been healed. This is what causes elections, as a pillar of democracy in this country, to experience an involution.

Also read: Ugly Democracy

Procedural pitfalls

The 2024 election is the 6th election in the reform era. In terms of quantity, it is the same as the number of elections in the New Order era. The journey of the New Order elections showed a degradation process due to being trapped on the procedural side.

The journey of the 6th election in the reform era should have been able to provide new hope with a clearer map to move from the tendency of stagnation towards democracy consolidation. However, the continuity of election problems indicates that democracy is still a periodic or seasonal agenda.

However, elections, as stipulated in Law No. 7 of 2017 concerning Elections, are a state system based on democracy. They are a prerequisite for ensuring the strengthening of the democratic state system through sustainable mechanisms.

Elections are not just about registration, campaigning, and voting, followed by the KPU's five-yearly announcement of the winner. Elections are a process that strengthens the democratic system by placing self-efficacy as the basis of participation.

In this context, elections must come as a continuous process to firstly, strengthen the political awareness of citizens as the determinant of leadership so that they cannot be easily mobilized. Second, to prevent the tendency of monopoly and the formation of oligarchies. Being trapped in procedures alone becomes a seed for grouping based on the power and caste of elites, with the people being just complementary to the party.

Learning from six past elections, a roadmap for elections has actually been established that goes beyond categorical measures and aims to strengthen the substantive and progressive quality of elections. Generally, electoral issues have been mapped out in the Election Law, which divides them into three categories: ethical code problems, administrative issues, and electoral crimes.

This categorization can essentially become a map of the problems in the election in minimizing deviations, not just ensuring violations and considering it finished with a judge's decision.

Elections are a process of strengthening a democratic system that places self-efficacy as the basis for participation.

The violation figures released by the Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) show the acute and chaotic issues in the 2024 Election, such as cases of intimidation at 2,271 polling stations for both voters and officers; mobilization carried out by the success team, election participants and organizers at 2,632 polling stations; exercising the right to vote more than once at 2,413 polling stations (Kompas.com, 15/2/2024); and vote shifting by PPK elements (Kompas.com, 8/3/2024). These are all tendencies towards violations that cannot be seen quantitatively and only in legalistic-formalistic terms.

A quantitative perspective only looks at calculative tendencies. Meanwhile, a legalistic-formalistic perspective sees it in the perspective of sanctions and final execution. Like covering a wound without a healing medicine, causing the stench of fraud and deviation to emerge in every election.

Healing in installments

Treating the "wounds" of the election must be done gradually and comprehensively. A simple diagnosis of the problem is the deviant relationship between the election organizers and contestants, as well as between the main actors and supporters of the election.

This deviant relationship occurs because of the availability of a dark room (black box) which provides freedom for transactions between individual organizers and individual contestants. Moreover, with an open proportional system, contestants are truly faced with competition to determine their own fate.

Even though individually there have been changes in the organizing actors, the tendency for deviation has crystallized into the atmosphere. There is a kind of false consciousness atmosphere that leads him to act beyond the rules of the game without feeling guilty.

This false awareness will continue to grow if the solutions offered to resolve election irregularities are only in the procedural, legalistic-formalistic realm.

The 2024 election, with all its notes, shows that our democracy is not doing well. The solution to overcome it is actually not difficult, but it's also not easy.

Also read: 2024 Election and National Leadership

It is not difficult as the problem's roadmap is clear, which is a deviation of consciousness among the elites that has spread in the form of normalization and permissive attitudes of the community towards democracy deviation. It is not easy because the key to this solution lies with the political elite themselves who have so far benefited from such deviations.

Therefore, elections must be returned to the womb (core) of democracy as a system that is not only institutionalized structurally, but also rooted culturally in the collective consciousness of citizenship. Elections do not stop when the winner is announced. Elections as an arena for leadership contestation require the availability of candidates who are in the process from the start as potential leaders.

This is where the political party's commitment in the leadership recruitment process is at stake to prioritize the merit system and integrity, not just popularity. And this cannot be obtained instantly or suddenly. Once again, elections are not a five-yearly seasonal party, but an ongoing process to produce leaders with integrity and a sovereign people.

A Bakir Ihsan, Political Science Lecturer at FISIP UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta

KOMPAS/NIKOLAUS HARBOWO

A Bakir Ihsan