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EDITORIAL: Time to heal divisions
It was open season for everybody to throw insults, mockery and tantrums at others who did not share their political views.
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A supporter of Jakarta gubernatorial candidate Anies Baswedan photographs the vote counting process as shown on a TV monitor at the Gerindra Party headquarters in South Jakarta on Wednesday (April 19, 2017) (JP/Dhoni Setiawan)
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akartans have been bitterly divided by politics over the past eight months but on Wednesday they could finally agree on one thing; they are now happy that the Jakarta gubernatorial election is finally over. How could they not be? It has been a long and suspense-filled eight months, starting in September last year when the gubernatorial candidates registered themselves to run in the poll.
Soon after the Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPU Jakarta) announced that three tickets were eligible to run in the Jakarta election, we witnessed what might have been the biggest political spectacle the country has ever seen, probably beating the 2014 presidential election.
In the space of just two months last year we saw what turned out to be the largest political rallies in this country’s history, one of which ended in violence.
As competition between the candidates intensified, the internet and social media became a repository of mankind’s worst tendencies and impulses.
It was open season for everybody to throw insults, mockery and tantrums at others who did not share their political views.
The stakes in the election were so high that we saw the country’s political bigwigs eagerly go at each other in public. On the eve of the first round, we witnessed a public feud between former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, both of whom were trying to defend their candidates in the race.
But the biggest casualty in this election was the country’s diversity.
