TheJakartaPost
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Concede defeat for peace
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Guns and roses: A resident gives a flower to a police officer securing a protest at Sarinah shopping area in Jakarta on Thursday. The area has been the venue of people staging a rally in the wake of the General Elections Commission’s announcement of the result of the April 17 presidential election. (The Jakarta Post/Wendra Ajistyatama )
W
hile most early-warning research in Indonesia has been focused on natural disasters such as tsunamis and volcano eruptions, there has been little discussion of human-made hazards such as terrorism, riots and civil unrest.
At the regional level, ASEAN has set up an intelligence information-sharing mechanism called Our Eyes Intelligence Initiative, which serves as an early-warning system to detect terrorist attacks.
At the national level, the Indonesian police have also established a system to preempt terrorist attacks, including a plot to bomb the General Elections Commission (KPU) office when it announced the election result, originally slated for May 22.
The police arrested dozens of terrorist suspects in a series of operations in a number of cities, while deploying troop reinforcements to Jakarta to anticipate mass rallies in protest at the election result.
Clashes between protesters and the police erupted on May 21 and 22 in several areas in Central and West Jakarta. Quite apart from the number of lives lost, the price we will have to pay for the violence is huge.
Learning from the two-day unrest in Jakarta, one of the best early-warning mechanisms to prevent or minimize the impacts of human-made hazards following the election is a concession of defeat by the losing candidate and the passing on of congratulations to the winner. A concession speech creates a favorable environment and eases tension as proven in many other countries.
When the KPU announced the election result early on May 21, the opposition leader Prabowo Subianto, who lost to incumbent President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, immediately refused to concede defeat and insisted on challenging the election result to the Constitutional Court, citing alleged massive fraud. In a democracy, a concession speech is part of the code of ethics that politicians share. It is a signal of political maturity.
