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Jakarta Post

Poverty and the ethical question of political coalitions

The article “Vote-buying puts democracy at risk” in this newspaper on Sunday portrays a human tragedy in the face of a tragic political failure

Fachry Ali (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Wed, April 23, 2014

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Poverty and the ethical question of political coalitions

T

he article '€œVote-buying puts democracy at risk'€ in this newspaper on Sunday portrays a human tragedy in the face of a tragic political failure.

A legislative candidate who failed in the April 9 election appeared in front of a food stall in Parepare, South Sulawesi; Andi Farida Soewandi demanded the owner to relinquish the stove she gave him in exchange for the latter'€™s political support.

After the stall owner, Zaenal, failed to convince her to wait until he had served his customers, he lifted the stove and smashed it on the pavement.

This is just one example of structural poverty, which continually haunts the survival of Indonesia'€™s democracy.

A conservative measure is that a person is poor if she/he earns less than US$1 a day. Until September 2013, Indonesia'€™s poor amounted to 28.59 million.

But using the World Bank'€™s benchmark, earnings of $2 a day, that figure rises to 49 million. Conservative estimates and the World Bank'€™s yardstick would mean we have some 94 million whose daily per capita income ranges from $10 down to $2 '€” an income highly prone to inflation impacts. Scholars estimate the contribution of food commodities alone to the spending of the poorest is over 70 percent of household income.

As a consequence, the lives of about 40 percent of our population of over 240 million are economically vulnerable. Besides food, everyone must consume fuel, gas and electricity, public transportation and, occasionally, recreation.

It is upon this inflation-prone society that the legislative election was staged, and not surprisingly the elections became another season of wealth distribution. Thus, the amount of votes a legislative candidate is able to gather likely correlates highly to t wealth she/he had distributed to potential voters.

Yet none of the political parties has taken this phenomenon as a serious problem for the future of democracy.

Thus we should question: First, shouldn'€™t the establishment of a political coalition be based on shared programs in eradicating poverty, to create a good and responsible democratic system?

Second, will the interparty coalition dismiss any ideological similarity just for the sake of getting a place in the next powerhouse?

People are fed up of the political parties, because of their destructive demonstration of continued corruption and nepotism.

Worse, the political coalitions will have the same old political parties with their top cadres implicated in corruption.

It is at this juncture that we face the ethical dilemma of realizing the necessary evil nature of the political parties. We must powerlessly accept a coalition among them, given the quick count results so far.

But the above ethical-based questions should guide the establishing of political coalitions.

As citizens, we have the obligation to demand that the political coalition must result in a pro-poverty eradication cabinet. A stronger people-based welfare can be created where a genuine democracy could be upheld.

Political contestations would also be much cheaper, negating excuses for corrupt practices in buying political support.

The writer is a cofounder of the Institute for the Study and Advancement of Business Ethics (LSPEU Indonesia).

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