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After losing the election, catch the silver lining
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A member of the Democratic Party of Struggle’s (PDI-P) National Elections Witnesses Body (BSPN) analyzes the preliminary results of the 2019 legislative elections at the party’s Jakarta office. (The Jakarta Post/Dhoni Setiawan)
I
n a society obsessed with success, we don’t talk about failure very often. So, we don’t talk about losing in elections either. We love to see the candidates who win. But, what about the ones who lose?
After the 2019 legislative election, we saw so many videos of losing candidates who became depressed.
Regretfully, their videos went viral on social media. As someone who was also running for the House of Representatives and who lost the race, I quite understood why those candidates could end up in such a state of mind.
Nobody said it was easy.
In our society, sometimes admitting you are having a rough time is “almost inappropriate”. Grief is unspoken, publicly ignored, except for those moments at the funeral that are over too quickly. I think we need to talk about it so we can shed light on mental health issues in general.
Running for office was not such an easy matter, especially if you chose not to buy votes.
First, it required an extremely fit body. A candidate had to campaign in several places in one day and meet as many people as possible because we needed to boost our popularity. It consumed long hours.
