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Political elites seem to have totally ignored public opinion surveys, which consistently debunk their claims of popular support for a presidential term extension.
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President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo looks on at sunrise after spending the night at a campsite in Penajam Paser Utara, East Kalimantan, on March 15, where the government intends to build a new capital city to replace Jakarta. (AFP/Presidential Palace/Agus Suparto)
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rominent political figures have come under fire for recent unsupported claims that a majority of the public supports the postponement of the 2024 elections, a move that would extend President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s time in office and would contravene the Constitution’s presidential term limit.
In late February, National Awakening Party (PKB) chairman Muhaimin Iskandar cited “big data analysis” that supposedly showed that 60 million Indonesian social media users were in favor of delaying the elections because it would keep the country’s economic recovery free from disruption.
In a similar move, Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister Luhut Pandjaitan, who is also the Golkar Party’s chief adviser, claimed in a recent interview that data sourced from 110 million Indonesian social media users showed that a majority of citizens would like to see the 2024 legislative and presidential elections delayed.
Neither Luhut nor Muhaimin provided further details on how or when the data was collected and analyzed.
These unverified claims have stoked the long-running debate over the proposed extension of President Jokowi’s tenure in the nation’s highest office, even as more urgent issues, such as the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, demand the nation’s attention.
The idea was initially floated not long after the former Jakarta governor took office for his second and final presidential term in 2019. On a number of occasions Jokowi has dismissed the proposal, and he once called it a “slap in the face”. More recently, he said that in the name of democracy, he could not silence those campaigning for the extra term.
Political elites seem to have totally ignored public opinion surveys, which consistently debunk their claims of popular support for a presidential term extension.
For example, a survey conducted by Kompas from March 7 to 12 that polled 1,000 respondents found that 62 percent wanted the presidential election be held as planned, on Feb. 24, 2024. In addition, 67 percent of the respondents also said the plan to delay the 2024 election was based on political, rather than economic, interests.
Meanwhile, in a poll conducted by the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) from Feb. 25 to March 1, more than 70 percent of respondents said they felt Jokowi should leave office after his term ended in October 2024, in line with the constitutional limit of two five-year terms for the president and vice president.
If there is truly popular support for delaying the elections, Muhaimin and Luhut need only to share the alleged “big data” to prove their claims.
But regardless, continuing the discourse on a presidential term extension for whatever reason is just too dangerous for Indonesia’s hard-won democracy, which was restored only after the fall of the New Order nearly 24 years ago.
Rather than entertaining such an idea, we should redouble our commitment to democracy, which over the last few years has shown signs of backsliding. Our democratic institutions are simply too important to be swayed by unsubstantiated claims from people in power.
