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2023: The year voters looked beyond election pomp, hype
Amid ongoing, prolonged and emerging issues across the globe in 2023, Indonesian voters seem more concerned about not repeating the mistakes from 2019 while demonstrating collective maturity in their increasing calls for free, fair and transparent elections next year.
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A political party representative signs on Nov. 29, 2023 the Declaration on the 2024 Peaceful Election Campaign during a ceremony at Maimun Palace in Medan, North Sumatra. (Antara/Fransisco Carolio)
The latter half of 2023 may be remembered by many people for laying bare some of mankind’s worst impulses, whether this might be an ability to tolerate or even support an unjust war, or an unwillingness to resolve the climate crisis.
Yet despite concerns that artificial intelligence could take away our jobs, poor air quality could harm our health or that a cost of living crisis is exposing the extent of our vulnerabilities, Indonesians seem to be consumed by the thought of not repeating the mistakes of the 2019 elections.
Indonesians of all stripes are gearing up for the 2024 general election, slated to be the world’s biggest simultaneous elections on a single day. And while the ghosts of sectarian politics and political polarization seem to be fading, fresh concerns over dynastic politics and institutional drift are already casting a long shadow over the integrity of the coming polls.
Naditya Fitriani Hasanah, a 29-year-old office worker from Bogor, West Java, is relishing the fact that so far, this election year is seeing much less squabbling among candidate supporters compared to the 2019 presidential election, whether online or offline.
“I remember in 2019, there were a lot more hostile political narratives peddled by supporters of the presidential candidates, such as kampret [bats] and kecebong [tadpoles]," she told The Jakarta Post on Friday, referring to two terms supporters used in a derogatory manner that year.
The last election saw a bitter contest between long-time rivals President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo and Gerindra Party chairman Prabowo Subianto, with the latter openly courting the support of Islamic conservatives and hard-line groups and echoing their interests.
The mudslinging between the two candidates’ supporters was marked by hostility, sectarianism, bigotry and racism, including the use of kecebong for Jokowi supporters and kampret for Prabowo supporters.
