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We need meaningful debates
But we are still waiting for meaningful debate on economic and social issues, the public’s greatest concerns.
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Presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto (Antara/Dhemas Reviyanto)
W
e are delighted that two months of the seven-month campaign period for the 2019 presidential election have passed with only the usual political noise and diatribes. The national campaign teams of the two presidential candidates have generally refrained from politicizing religion, race or ethnicity in their campaign speeches.
But we are still waiting for meaningful debate on economic and social issues, the public’s greatest concerns. The 23-page vision and mission of challenger Prabowo Subianto is long on normative goals in these areas but short on doable programs for achieving those lofty objectives, so that it has hardly attracted any public attention.
How can voters consider giving Prabowo the benefit of the doubt if they are not enlightened, at the very least, on an outline of the key action programs for realizing his overall development strategy?
Prabowo should be fully aware that his biggest challenge is the advantage President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo holds as the incumbent. The Jokowi camp is practically campaigning on a daily basis so that the people can easily see and feel the results of his economic management.
We therefore suggest that Prabowo and his team, instead of resorting to remarks that insult the people’s intelligence, focus on briefing them on the basics of his development platform to help open-minded voters make well-informed choices on voting day.
Judging from the most pressing economic and social problems the country is facing today, we believe the public would be most interested in learning how Prabowo will address the following issues:
First, on human resource development, how does he plan to improve general education, market-oriented vocational training and access to basic health care services?
Second, how will he accelerate bureaucratic reform to combat corruption and urge deregulation to expedite the provision of public services and investment licensure?
Third, what are his programs on reducing inequality in income and asset ownership, and how does he intend to accelerate land titling for farmers and land registration for social forestry programs?
Fourth, how does he plan to improve food security through diversification of staple foods and increased production of rice, horticultural crops and livestock, given our heavy dependence on food commodity imports?
Fifth, how does Prabowo intend to speed up infrastructure development to improve rural-urban connectivity and inter-island access to reduce logistics costs and for better domestic market integration?
Sixth, what are his plans for driving domestic and foreign investment in natural resource-based manufacturing and for increasing value-added exports while reducing imports of basic and intermediate goods?
Last but not least, how does Prabowo intend to promote foreign tourism to narrow the current account deficit and eventually turn it into a surplus and thereby improve the rupiah exchange rate?
The citizens of one of the world’s largest democracies deserve a much more stimulating and informative campaign period so that we can exercise our intelligence and rationale in choosing our nation’s chief executive on April 17, 2019.
