T

he lengths people will go to get what they want this election year is amazing, though not all that surprising. A case in point is the latest fatwa, or legal opinion, issued by the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), which essentially states that it is a moral sin if you don't cast your vote in this year's elections.

The MUI is the umbrella organization of all the major Islamic organizations in the country and it is its business to issue opinions on matters of public interest. Now the group has been asked to make its ruling regarding the one aspect that election officials fear the most: The likelihood of a very low turnout in the parliamentary elections in April and presidential election in July.

Their fear is based on the increasingly low participation at local elections in the past year, ranging from 40 to 60 percent, and at the growing skepticisms about the political parties and the way the upcoming elections are being conducted.

No less than the General Elections Commission (KPU) has appealed to the public to ignore those growing skeptical opinions and to take part in the nation's periodic democratic exercises in electing their leaders. The commission, as are those who are obsessed with numbers, fear that Indonesia's nascent democracy will be undermined if voter turnout falls below a certain percentage.

In other words, the KPU measures its success on this magic number. Political parties, in particular the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), have their own reason for seeing a high number: A lost vote is a wasted vote. Hence, the MUI is now recruited into their campaign to force or intimidate people into voting, lest they earn God's wrath.

Here is the problem: Voting in Indonesia, like in most democracies, is voluntary. There should be no legal consequences if you don't vote, unlike in Australia or in Singapore where voting is mandatory. The flipside of this is that abstaining is a right that is protected by the Constitution.

This overt fear about low turnout is a leftover from the Soeharto years, when the credibility of the election (and therefore his reelection every five years) depended on it. Soeharto's political legitimacy hinged on how many people voted. Intimidation and use of force was the rule, so much so that in 1993, East Timor, then under Indonesian military rule, officially recorded a 105 percent turnout.

Knowing his obsession with the number, Soeharto's critics as far back as 1971 began a civil disobedience movement to encourage people to vote with their feet, or to spoil their ballots. Their movement has been called the Golongan Putih (blank votes group), or Golput for short, as opposed to Golkar, Soeharto's political machinery that helped secure his five-yearly reelections until 1998.

Soeharto has long gone from politics, Golput continues to enjoy legitimacy today, more than it deserves, thanks to this political mindset that still measures the quality of our democracy, and legitimacy of the elected officers, by voter turnout.

People stay away from voting for many reasons, one of which is as an expression of discontent at the electoral system and political parties. But since abstaining is an option, some people may not vote because they cannot be bothered by the long lines, because of the weather factor, because they are ill, or because they feel that their vote makes no difference to the outcome.

Whatever the reason for not voting, they are exercising their democratic right. No one, not even MUI, has the right to force or intimidate them into voting. If the law makes it a crime for anyone to discourage people from voting, the reverse should also be true: that it is a crime for MUI and others like it to intimidate people into voting.

If all non-voters are lumped as Golput, it beats its chief nemesis, Golkar, which has been struggling to hold on to its last vestiges of power. And if we continue to give it political legitimacy the way we do today and Golput passes the 20 percent threshold that gives it the right to nominate a presidential candidate, then the group should be allowed to present a candidate. Any volunteers?

The real task at hand is not so much about people not turning up to vote as about making sure that those who qualify to vote are registered to do so, and that on voting day, those who want to vote can cast their votes in peace, without any interference or pressure.