Negative campaigning rife among rivals

Adianto P. Simamora ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Tue, 06/30/2009 8:06 AM  |  Headlines

President Susilo Bambang Yu-dhoyono made the most negative comments during the last three weeks of campaign activities but at the same time also received a large number of attacks from his rivals, research revealed Monday.

The research, conducted by public relations company Strategy PR, showed that out of 319 articles containing negative campaign messages, about 128 articles were made by Yudhoyono, his running mate Boediono and their campaign team.

“Still, there were also 163 articles attacking the Yudhoyono-Boediono ticket,” Strategy director Ali Nurdin said, referring to comments from the other two pairs of presidential candidates — Megawati Soekarnoputri and Prabowo Subianto, and Jusuf Kalla and Wiranto.

The research said the Kalla and Wiranto pair and their campaign team had made negative remarks in 89 articles, mostly directed against Boediono, and had received 89 negative articles in return.

The Megawati-Prabowo pair and their campaign team  addressed the negative issues in 78 articles and received negative comments 67 times.

There  were at least 26 other negative articles aimed at Yudhoyono by parties that were possibly connected to the other candidate pairs.

“It seems both Kalla and Megawati ‘besieged’ the Yudhoyono-pair with negative campaign messages. We hardly found any criticisms traded between Kalla and Megawati.”

The 319 negative campaign cases were part of 1,689 articles analyzed by Strategy related to campaign activities published in daily newspaper including Jurnal National, Kompas, Koran Tempo, Media Indonesia, Republika, Rakyat Merdeka, Suara Karya and Suara Pembaruan with three news portals of Antara, Detik and Inilah.com between June 1 and June 22, 2009.

The negative campaigns included the use of “neolib” (directed against Boediono, who is alleged to have implemented the neoliberal economic policy), headscarves and Java/non-Java issues.

Political experts said negative campaigns were useful in helping to  educate people on the quality of the presidential hopefuls.

The experts, however, expressed concern over the fact that most of the negative campaign messages mainly focused on the personality of presidential candidates.

“The ‘war’ on negative campaigns fails to touch on the programs promoted by the hopefuls. These are solely personality attacks, such as the issues of headscarves or religion,” political analyst from Indonesian Institute of Science (LIPI) Lili Romli said.

Executive director from the  Center for Study of Islam and Society at the State Islamic University (UIN) Jakarta Jajat Burhanudin said the presidential hopefuls’ campaign teams had not yet made the most of crucial issues concerning negative campaigns against its rivals.

“The candidates’ campaign teams should be more creative in raising the negative campaign issues, otherwise it could be harmful to their own candidates.”

He said the issue of religions such as headscarves, as directed against the Yudhoyono-Boediono pair, was no longer saleable in the campaign to lure Muslim voters.

A political expert from the University of Indonesia, Rocky Gerung, said the media needed to discipline itself to maintain the integrity of democracy in the election by featuring important substantiated issues instead of cheap and sensational ones.

“The media must ignore issues that are counter-productive. If any presidential campaign team manages to manipulate the media into featuring sensational and gossip-filled issues, then the media will lose and degrade its integrity.”

Rocky said he believed the recent sensational but unsubstantiated issues were published by presidential campaign teams to gain exposure.

“The media functions as the first filter of issues in democracy. If the media are filled with unsubstantiated issues thrown out by presidential campaign  teams, then they have failed to function properly.” (hdt)

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