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Millennials matter in regional elections

Millennials, those born between 1980 and 2000, were a strategic target group for the latest regional elections

Budi Irawanto (The Jakarta Post)
Singapore
Tue, July 17, 2018

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Millennials matter in regional elections

M

illennials, those born between 1980 and 2000, were a strategic target group for the latest regional elections. This is because they comprised some 80 million of voters under 40 years old.

In addition, about 10 million of them will be first-time voters in next year’s legislative and presidential elections.

Using the recent East Java gubernatorial election as a case study, it would be interesting to investigate the correlation between the significance of the role millennials play in the election as reflected in the proposed
programs featured during the campaign.

During the campaign period, the candidate for the deputy governor of East Java, Puti Guntur Soekarno, was helped by her son and daughter to reach out to the people of Surabaya and Malang. Puti’s son and daughter were cast as representatives of millennials who empathize with the aspirations of their demographic of voters.

Meanwhile, the opposing and winning candidate for deputy governor, Emil Dardak, an icon for millennial in politics, celebrated his 34th birthday with other young people.

To attract the millennial crowd, exceptional campaigning events were organized, despite their “small” size when compared to kampanye akbar (mass rallies). Typically, these smaller events feature concerts with celebrity guests, including famous YouTubers or social influencers.

Other campaigning events were in the format of a talk show or other interaction-based formats. Although such events provided opportunities for millennials to directly question candidates, the latter appeared unattractive due to the lack of entertaining elements.

However, both candidate pairs in the East Java gubernatorial election employed both old and new media to communicate to young voters, particularly city dwellers.

Imitating millennials, they created and updated almost daily video blogs (vlogs) of their campaign trails across the province.

Furthermore, these political candidates routinely uploaded various photographs or images onto their Instagram account, while on Twitter, they posted quotes and greetings.

It was crucial for these candidates to selectively upload social media content that can be considered eye-catching in order to encourage a more positive response from potential young voters, as well as to increase
their number of followers and “likes”.

Unlike dull conventional television campaigns, more creative elements in the video campaigns of these candidates’ YouTube channels were included. For instance, the campaign team of Saifullah Yusuf (Gus Ipul) and running mate Puti created a parody of local box office hit Dilan 1990 as well as the upcoming release of Wiro Sableng on the legendary martial arts hero.

While these parodies attempted to persuade millennials to vote for Gus Ipul-Puti, they also served to remind young voters to respect different political aspirations, thus, promoting a peaceful election.

While candidate pairs in the gubernatorial election have attempted to embrace the significant role of millennials in their campaign through old and new media, they had limited programs that directly addressed millennials’ interests.

In fact, the candidates’ proposed programs mostly deal with generic issues, such as the eradication of poverty, improvement of basic education, increasing social welfare and health care.

While such programs would impact millennials positively in the long run, unfortunately, only a few programs addressed their specific needs.

For instance, workshops for start-up businesses can perhaps be deemed specifically targeting entrepreneurs, which today mostly comprise millennials.

This situation perhaps reflects the lack of in-depth knowledge among candidates and their campaign teams regarding the aspirations and interests of millennials due to less credible and reliable research as a basis to formulate their programs.

As a result, most programs promoted by the candidates tended to be less innovative and less distinctive from one another.

Another key factor is the oligarchic structure of political parties in Indonesia, controlled as they are by senior politicians. This has created many obstacles for young politicians to participate in local elections.

Political kinship remains an influential factor for young or novice politicians to further their budding political careers, rather than the meritocratic principle.

While interviewing some millennials in Surabaya during my research on the East Java gubernatorial election, I found deep-seated political apathy among the young due to the widely negative perception of politics in
Indonesia, contributed by dirty political practices such as rampant corruption, vote buying (money politics), horse trading and the like.

Moreover, the small number of politicians and bureaucrats perceived to be clean and credible enough to be role models has cemented a negative image of politics as a career that is not worth pursuing.

Not surprisingly, millennials contribute to the persisting number of golput (non-voters) or at least compose a significant number of undecided voters in the regional elections. Indeed, this would affect the level of political participation and the quality of political contestations in Indonesia without firm actions to resolve this issue.

Therefore, political candidates must accommodate millennials into their policies, given their great potential to shape the nation’s future political landscape.

Unfortunately, most political candidates and their supporting parties seem to have neglected millennials’ interests and aspirations, apart from using them as gimmicks in their political rhetoric or campaigns.

Next year’s legislative and presidential elections should show further evidence of how far millennials have been transformed into an important political subject or remain insignificant voter statistics. If this happens, there is little hope for the rejuvenation and renewal of our future political culture.
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The writer is a visiting fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, the Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore.

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