The rare show is now coming to our home. Let's finish our work earlier and come home soon, sit down in front of the TV and enjoy it as within two coming weeks we will be entertained by a much-awaited show ahead of the presidential election that is scheduled on July 8.

The show, titled "Presidential debate" is considered as a historic event for Indonesia since it will present all of the presidential/vice presidential candidates by face to face, and aired by several TV stations as a live event.

People, regardless of their status and profession, enthusiastically watched the first debate on June 18 that presented Megawati Soekarnoputri, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Jusuf Kalla.

Although the event is quite interesting, we didn't see the real debate as expected since the three candidates tended to be bold and underline the rival's view, no challenges toward the description that was presented by each. The nuance was so different with the "war of claims" or "war of criticism" during their campaign or as shown in their advertisements in mass media.

People actually expected it would become a hot debate particularly between the incumbent SBY and the challenger Mega because public knew the two candidates always attack each other since SBY in reign till today. But if the debate was expected to face-off between the incumbent versus the challenger, where should JK stand?

I think the General Election Commission (KPU) who determined such format of the debate intended to avoid open clashes among the candidates in front of public. The debate will likely only try to capture the "high level" views from the three candidates upon the selected issues, thus, we saw the explanation presented by them only touch on the normative level. For me, it will be much better and exciting to watch if the moderator put the real hot topics on the table then dug deeply for each candidate's thoughts over the topics.

For example, when raising the past human rights violation issue, the moderator could directly offer the Munir case: How the law and justice goes so far, why there is so many awkwardness in the law processing, why the mastermind is not captured yet and how to solve it. When raised about protection of the TKW (women migrant workers), the moderator could take Nirmala Bonat or Siti Hajar as examples of TKW who were tortured by their employer as the real case occurred recently.

The next debates hopefully would raise other topics that I believe will very much attract public attention such as the neoliberalism issue: Why has Boediono accused by his rivals of being a neoliberal figure? The moderator could directly ask Budiono's rivals what the accusation based on, and then give Boediono a chance to respond. The BLT (direct cash aid) that picked by Mega as a bullet to shoot SBY also the real attractive issue.

By watching the debates over the hot-real topics, public would know whether the candidates really understand a bunch of the problems of our country and how to solve it. People want to see the leaders who are able to simplify the complicated problems by a simple description, not just by a jargon nor by a monologue campaign that attacks the rivals while the rivals cannot give a direct answer on that.

Finally, the candidates should realize that winning the debates will not automatically win the hearts of people. But still, the debates show is a very good tool for people to learn politics and democracy in which the spirit of sportiveness abides.

Titus Jonathan

Serpong, Banten

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