Election Candidates Rely on Volunteers
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Presidential candidate with serial number 01 Joko Widodo takes a photo with the participants attending a gathering of retired Indonesian Military-National Police (TNI-Polri) officers at JI. Expo, Kemayoran Jakarta, Sunday (10/2/2019). In the gathering, around one thousand of TNI-Polri retirees give support to the Joko Widodo-Ma\'ruf Amin candidate pair in the 2019 presidential election.
The 2019 presidential candidates view volunteers as having an important role in their campaigns, as their backing parties are more focused on winning the legislative election.
JAKARTA, KOMPAS — The 2019 general elections, which will hold the legislative and presidential elections together for the first time, has led to a general lack of focus among political parties in campaigning for the presidential and vice presidential candidates they are supporting. Under this condition, the presidential campaign teams have been relying on volunteers to secure victories in various constituencies.
The Joko Widodo-Ma’ruf Amin and Prabowo Subianto-Sandiaga Uno campaign teams both have divisions that organize and coordinate volunteers across almost all provinces in Indonesia. There have been 1,827 volunteer groups supporting Jokowi-Ma’ruf and another 1,386 groups supporting Prabowo-Sandiaga since December 2018.
These volunteers are generally sent out to run face-to-face and door-to-door campaigns in all areas, whether is their candidate’s constituency or the opponent’s constituency.
Volunteer director Maman Imanulhaq of the Jokowi-Ma’ruf national campaign team said in Jakarta on Friday (2/8/2019) that the party machines could not campaign optimally for their presidential candidates in this year’s election. Maman, a National Awakening Party (PKB) politician and a legislative candidate, said that the parties were divided in their focus, as they also had to campaign for the legislative election.
The party machinery was still campaigning for the presidential election, but this was no longer their primary campaign drive. “We face a very difficult challenge today, as the parties are more focused on the legislative election. Herein lays the important role of volunteers,” he said.
Deputy chair Eddy Soeparno of the Prabowo-Sandiaga national campaign team shared Maman’s view. He said that, compared to the 2014 election, volunteers had a greater role and function in the 2019 simultaneous presidential-legislative election. The political parties were using more resources in campaigning for its legislative candidates.
Eddy said that volunteers had an advantage in that they were flexible, as their movements were not limited by the long decision-making chain of political parties.
Presidential candidate with serial number 02 Prabowo Subianto greets the workers while attending the 20th anniversary of the Federation of Indonesian Metal Workers\' Union (FSPMI) in Kelapa Gading, Jakarta, Wednesday (06/02/2019). Prabowo appreciated the support given by FSPMI for the Prabowo Subianto-Sandiaga Uno candidate pair.
Increased role
Both campaign teams agreed that the volunteers’ mobility had a significant positive effect. The Jokowi-Ma’ruf team’s internal survey found that the pair’s electability in Banten had gone up from 35 percent to 38 percent in the past two weeks. Banten is known as a Prabowo constituency. “This is because our
volunteers have campaigned massively in the region [compared to legislative candidates and the coalition machinery],” said Maman.
The campaign team and volunteers were coordinating through various means, including WhatsApp groups. “We give them inputs on which regions they should work on, what they must do and other things,” he said.
Volunteer centers had also been established in several regions to help consolidate resources.
Sulianto Rusli, the Greater Jakarta coordinator of the Barisan Relawan Bhinneka Jaya (Bara Baja) volunteer group, said that the greater role and contributions of volunteers in this year’s election was palpable. Sulianto, who also volunteered for the Jokowi-Jusuf Kalla campaign in 2014, said that back then, volunteers were often asked to contribute to party-organized campaign events. This year, out of the nine parties backing Jokowi-Ma’ruf, only the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) – Jokowi’s party – was actively campaigning for the pair. The other parties were less involved, said Sulianto.
Volunteers were tasked nearly every day with reaching out to local residents in their areas. Bara Baja’s volunteers had also rejected requests from legislative candidates of Jokowi-Ma’ruf’s coalition to help with their campaigns.
Prabowo-Sandiaga volunteer director Ferry Mursyidan Baldan said that the campaign team had set up a volunteer division, as it understood the importance of exploring potential supporters outside its political parties. The division is tasked with synchronizing volunteers with the party structures.
Ferry said that volunteers had voiced their concerns over political parties that were too focused on the legislative election at the expense of presidential election, which he then tried to raise with the parties. Collaboration between legislative candidates and volunteers were also common. The volunteers would help legislative candidates as long as they had photographs of Prabowo and Sandiaga on their campaign materials.
Prabowo-Sandiaga volunteer head Pius Lustrilanang said that Sandiaga had asked the volunteers to focus on winning the 2019 presidential election. Pius said the team was focusing on recruiting polling station coordinators and preparing volunteers at 100,000 polling stations by the end of March. This year’s election will have around 800,000 polling stations nationwide.
Pius’ volunteer group, Rumah Djoeang (“House of Struggle”), had also supported the Anies Baswedan-Sandiaga Uno pair in the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election. “When we were asked to help with the presidential [campaign], we expanded our reach nationwide,” he said.
Volunteers’ dilemma
Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) researcher Firman Noor said that the phenomenon of presidential campaign teams relying much more on volunteers this year had raised questions on how the party elites controlled their political machines. Garnering grassroots votes should be the responsibility of parties, not volunteers.
Firman continued that involving volunteers was not entirely mistaken, as this strengthened political participation among the general public. However, excessive use of volunteers would jeopardize the
quality of national democracy. The culture of political transactions would be unavoidable, as the volunteers would believe that the political parties were indebted to them once their candidates won the election.
“Volunteers may eventually control political claims, especially of ‘sharing the spoils,” he said.
Surabaya Survey Center president director Mochtar W. Oetomo said that volunteers could help with the campaigns for both the legislative and presidential elections in a simultaneous election, although it depended on the regional context and the volunteers.
Mochtar said that the present-day complexity could potentially reduce the militancy of volunteer organizations.
The candidates’ declarations of their massive volunteer groups and their huge number on paper may only be a show of force as political camouflage, and that not all volunteers might be actively involved in the campaigns.
(AGE/REK/EDN/E21/SAN/BOW)
