And the real winners are...the commercial TV stations

Endy M. Bayuni ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Fri, 07/03/2009 2:53 PM  |  Headlines

Presidential hopefuls Jusuf Kalla and Megawati Soekarnoputri are in serious trouble going into the July 8 election next week after their less than mediocre performance in the last round of the presidential debates on Thursday night.

The incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has enjoyed a huge lead in most surveys, easily outperformed and outwitted his challengers, even as he appeared stiff and at times tense during the two-hour televised debate. But he scored better than the others through his delivery, his mastery of the issues, and his clarity. The others either stuttered or mumbled their way through the debate.

But voters were not served well by the debate because the candidates were allowed by the moderator not to answer some questions, and instead engaged in old slogans and worn-out TV sound bytes.

This leaves the nagging question about who the real winners are. And the answer is the TV stations which enjoyed high ratings - the election commission claims 80 million people tuned in to each of the five presidential and vice presidential debates.

And with ratings come huge ad revenues from all kind of commercials, including the candidates' own political ads as well as regular consumer goods.

Kalla, the current Vice President, managed to throw a jab at Yudhoyono, more popularly known as SBY, at the start when he attacked the election team of the incumbent for its obsession with winning the election in one round, instead of two, in order to save money, as usurping the democratic process.

"If he wins, he may even say no election in 2014, to save money," he quipped.

But it was a weak jab, not the killing punch that Kalla so desperately needed if he wanted to turn the table around at the polls next week and have a remote chance of depriving the president of a one-round victory.

Yudhoyono managed to duck the few jabs that went his way, and he even highlighted Kalla's inconsistency for cutting back the 2009 election budget while at the same time insisting that money should not be an obstacle for a nation to practice democracy.

The debate, the third involving the three candidates, did not live up to its billing as the "real final battle".

If anything, voters were likely to come away completely unimpressed with the poor communication skills of their would-be leaders.

At the very least, Yudhoyono showed mastery of the issues at hand and ventured to answer the only really tough question asked on the night: What do you plan to do with the many regional laws that are discriminatory to religious minorities?

Megawati and Kalla wisely perhaps, avoided directly entering this potential minefield, and instead gave general lectures about the nation's motto "unity in diversity".

Yudhoyono acknowledged that these bylaws were discriminatory and promised to roll them back. Whether he will do it, given that he never attempted to stop the process happening during his current term, is something the moderator could have pushed on, but decided not to.

The moderator, political scientist Pratikto of the Yogyakarta-based Gadjah Mada University, won plaudits for rudely interrupting all the candidates when they went over their allotted time. After last night, he must have become Megawati's worst nightmare as she was the worst offender by almost always going over her allotted time.

We will know next week whether the debates have any impact on the election outcome. But going by the mediocre performances of all the candidates and their running mates, it is almost safe to assume that the debates hardly made a dent in Yudhoyono's reelection campaign.

Kalla and Megawati, as well as Yudhoyono, will only have themselves to blame.

All three candidates set so many terms for accepting their participation that they made sure the debates were stale and void of real substance. They saw the debates as a venue for them to recite their campaign promises rather than a forum to test their own leadership and communication skills.

The candidates were even allowed by the General Election Commission (KPU) to select the moderators, and naturally they went for safety and chose academics over hard-hitting TV journalists who would never allow candidates to avoid answering the question.

The debates ended up more like made-for-TV shows, more for their entertainment value than to really sway public opinions. Even the set up, the timing, and at times the applause, were meticulously choreographed.

It is the TV stations that won the day. Not the candidates and not the voters. The stations are allowed to use 30 minutes of the scheduled 90 minute-long debate to air commercials. And that's a heck a lot of money.

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