T

he national election campaign, which will officially kick off on Sunday, will stretch over an unusually long period — nearly seven months. With the wounds from the bitterly contested election of 2014 not yet completely healed for many, fears linger about further polarization that could lead to violence this time around.

For sure many things, good or bad, can happen in the span of 29 weeks between Sept. 23 and April 13, 2019, which the General Elections Commission (KPU) has allocated as the campaign season. Regardless of the police’s assurances of security and order, electoral candidates’ pledges to campaign peacefully and the political elite’s call for their grassroots supporters to maintain their composure, such a lengthy period is a cause for concern among the public at large and business players alike.

The KPU has arranged a long campaign session as the electorate will vote for their choices of legislative and presidential candidates simultaneously on April 17, 2019. Eligible voters across the country will cast five ballots for the president and members of the House of Representatives, Regional Representatives Council, provincial legislative councils (DPRD I) and regency/city legislative councils (DPRD II), except for those in Jakarta who will not elect DPRD II members.

Indonesia has largely been free of major clashes at elections since they were first held in 1955. The political climate has often heated up during the electoral cycle, however, in particular in the 2014 presidential race when smear campaigns in the form of slander, hoaxes and hate speech were used in a massive, systematic and structured manner.

For many reasons, the presidential election will steal the limelight from the legislative elections, which is unfortunate as the spirit of animosity that characterized the presidential race four years ago will continue to haunt us.

There are signs of a déjà vu as both camps of rival presidential tickets, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo-Ma’ruf Amin and Prabowo Subianto-Sandiaga Uno, claim to best represent Muslim voters and have appointed figures known for their conservative Islamic views as campaigners to win over the electorate. While such a tactic is legitimate, a persistent playing of the religious card constitutes a setback for, or at least stagnation in, the democratic process in the country, which always claims to be a model of compatibility between Islam and democracy.

Both campaign teams have instructed their members to refrain from using holy verses to delegitimize their opponents. However, on the ground few people will care whether this rule is upheld as everybody will focus on how to win the race.

Hopes, however slim, remain alive that issues of tribal affiliations, religion, race and societal groups (SARA), as the cheapest ways to win votes, will not mark the upcoming election campaign, especially given the ongoing crisis hitting hard at the global economy and that of Indonesia.

Rather than relying on old and dirty tricks, both camps should shift their campaign themes to prescriptions for raising the country out of the doldrums. We long for a battle of solid ideas in the election campaign ahead.