The Winding Road of Young Politicians

KOMPAS/HERU SRI KUMORO

Deputy Director of the Young Voters Mobilization of the National Campaign Team, who is also a politician from the Indonesian Solidarity Party, Tsamara Amany Alatas, arrives at the TKN dissolution meeting in Menteng, Jakarta, Friday (26/7/2019). Present at the meeting were the pair of president and vice president-elect Joko Widodo and Ma\'rif Amin, the party leaders supporting the Jokowi-Amin pair and members of the TKN team.

Young people beginning their political career on the country’s political stage face a long and winding road.

In the midst of the discourse over the regeneration of politicians in 2024, the young politicians who will sit in the House of Representatives in the 2019-2024 period must fight off stigma and stereotypes to prove that the promises they made during the election campaign were not empty.

Putri Anetta Komarudin, 25, says she is used to being underestimated. The daughter of Golkar Party politician Ade Komarudin is often accused of merely taking advantage of her father\'s big name. "As a young woman, and a daughter of an influential politician, I am often ignored and underestimated," she said in Jakarta on Sunday.

Putri’s father served as the speaker of the House in 2016. The 2019 election was Putri’s first experience was as a candidate for a seat in the House under Golkar. She won 70,164 votes in the same electoral district as her father, West Java VII (Purwakarta, Karawang, Bekasi), so she will most likely qualify for the House.

As one of the young people who want to enter the political stage, Putri said, she is often considered inexperienced or mentally incapable of facing the rigors of the political world. For young politicians, especially those who happen to be the children of political elites or high-ranking officials, the stigma is often mixed with other stereotypes such as that they only rely on the big names of their parents or relatives.

Putri has had to accept such opinions since she decided to enter the political arena. "People say that I rely on my father. That\'s not true because my father happened to be very ill [during the election] and I ended up having to rely on myself,” he said.

A similar experience was shared by Hillary Brigitta Lasut, 23, from the Nasdem Party, who will be the youngest elected member of the House. Hillary, who got 59,060 votes during the legislative election, was often sneeringly dismissed as just a small child. "I was often asked what a child can do? Don\'t talk too much if you don\'t have experience," said the daughter of the (elected) regent of Talaud, North Sulawesi, Elly Lasut. Hillary claimed to have prepared mental strategies to deal with a political culture that still prioritizes seniority in the House. The first strategy is to remain humble and not arrogant in front of senior politicians.

Another strategy is setting up a personal research team. Thus, every statement she will make in the legislature or in the public sphere will always be based on data. "I will come up with data, not just rhetoric," she said.

Dave Laksono, 40, who has been reelected as a House member for 2019-2024, said that young people who sit in the House must be willing to work hard. Dave gave an example, in the first year of his duties as a member of the legislature for the 2014-2019 period, he learned to understand the political processes in the House.

"We must understand the political direction of the government and the factions or parties, especially to find the balance between the agenda of the government and the party," said the son of Golkar politician Agung Laksono.

He argues the main requirement for getting into the House is to approach and communicate with the grass roots. Big names of families and political parties cannot guarantee that young candidates can win a seat in the House.

Because of this, during the election in April, Dave chose to hold an intense meeting with his voters in order to absorb their aspirations and offer solutions to them.

Promises

Young politicians claim to be ready to fight for certain issues. Putri Komarudin, for example, will fight for a capital law that is friendlier to women entrepreneurs. She promoted this idea in her campaign in the election during which she raised the issue of a "Bank Emok", a cooperative that operated like a loan shark targeting housewives in her electoral district in West Java.

"If women are given education and easy access to capital, economic growth can certainly be higher," he said.

Meanwhile, Hillary wants to focus on the issue of education, especially the difficulties related to access to education, teaching staff and poor school infrastructure in remote areas in her electoral district, North Sulawesi.

"Maybe, at the center [Jakarta], this problem often goes unseen. However, in the regions, the real need of the people is educational facilities,” she said.

As for Dave, he wants to improve the legislative duties of the House, which have never reached their target. He also wants to achieve a more transparent House.

In the end, the people will judge, in the next five years, whether the young politicians will become agents of change who dare to take risks in the legislature or choose to hide in their comfort zones and follow the prevailing political culture.