Election? What election?: Several men of the Sakai tribe, one of the most solitary communities in Riau, smile in front of their house while watching an election campaign conducted by a legislative candidate recently. Many members of the tribe say they will not vote in the upcoming election as voting in previous elections failed to raise their standard of living. (JP/Rizal Harahap)

Sakai tribal people in Bengkalis Island, Riau, have expressed their apolitical stance towards elections and legislative candidates.

Far away from traffic crowds, hi-tech products, skyrocketing buildings, money and other modern lifestyle, Sakai tribal people living a simplicity in remote areas in Bengkalis Island, Riau, expressed their apolitical stand towards the general election and their skepticism about political parties and legislative candidates giving empty promises from one election to another one, saying they would not show up in polling stations during the balloting day on April 9.

Of some 250 tribal voters occupying swampy areas and riverbanks in Petani village, Mandau district, some 150 kilometers north off the provincial capital of Pekanbaru, only 80 were registered as eligible voters and the remaining 120 were not registered with the local birth and civilian registration office supplying potential voters to the local polling body since they decline to pay some money to apply for single identity cards.

Andang, a 48-year-old resident, said a majority of tribal people had no enthusiasm in the upcoming election after having a good lesson from the past elections which brought no changes to their social and economic livelihood. "We have been bored of getting only empty promises which have never been fulfilled and our current condition is not different from the New Order, 1999 and 2004. What for we have to go to the polling station?," he told The Jakarta Post in his hut here on Friday.

He acknowledged that he has known about how to tick the ballot papers as all residents in the village have received information campaigns from the local polling body and legislative candidates in the past months. "A great number of public officials, including regents and councilors, visited the regency for various interests but in our eyes they came here only make a picnic to enjoy our poverty, backwardness, or take over our communal land without any humane payment," he said.

Andang was showing his tribe's pragmatism and said that the tribal people had no political lobbies but they were trying to connect the general election with their daily life and problems.

"Many political parties have pledged during their campaign in the past elections to defend our communal rights on our land and to harvest our forests, but after that our land is continually shrinking and we have arrested for harvesting our forests," he said, adding most residents had no their identity cards and have never received any cash aids, subsidized rice or medical aids making them depending on the nature.

Many other tribal voters in Jembatan Dua village said they would not use their voting rights in their protest of the intensified crackdown on loggers on their own forests. They also questioned why the forest police launched the raid while they were indigenous residents of the island and the government has denied their communal rights over the rich forests.

Adim, head of a neighborhood in the village, said almost all residents in the village were illiterate but they knew about their rights and wanted to change their rights and achieve advancements in their life and the government had no rights to set their determination or their fate.

"This is our environment, our world and our land where our ancestors have been living far before the government exists," he said.

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