PRESS RELEASE
IDENTITY POLITICS IN THE 2019 ELECTION CAMPAIGN
The 2019 Presidential Election campaign period should be a means for the public to obtain information about the ideas offered by the candidate pairs. The public is awaiting the emergence of various programmatic narratives that will serve as the basis for making their choice on April 17th. Unfortunately, the campaign period that has lasted for approximately the last five months is still dominated by campaigns that capitalize on issues of ethnicity, religion, race, and intergroup relations (SARA), identity politics, fake news content and hate speech, as well as political banter between camps regarding non-substantive issues. This condition is also exacerbated by the massive mobility of campaigns on social media, through the mobilization of influencers and buzzer troops in order to accelerate the amplification and dissemination of issues. Instead of encouraging a quality election process, this phenomenon actually increases polarization in society, and is even suspected of further encouraging apathy towards elections and strengthening the movement to abstain from voting.
In response to this problem, the Center for Political Studies of the University of Indonesia (Puskapol UI) conducted research on “Managing Identity Politics: Counter-Narrative Strategies Against the Politicization of Identity Politics in the 2019 Election Through the Involvement of Candidate Campaign Teams.” This research aims to obtain a more comprehensive picture of the issue map and management of identity politics issues in the 2019 Election as well as the preparation of recommendations to encourage programmatic campaigns and counter-narrative strategies against the politicization of identity issues. This research was conducted using the FGD method and in-depth interviews with digital experts, academics, election activists, media, and representatives of each candidate’s campaign team. The research was conducted at the national level and in three regions with high levels of election vulnerability (based on Bawaslu-RI’s 2018 IKP data), namely the DIY Province (Yogyakarta), North Sumatra Province (Medan), and West Kalimantan Province (Pontianak).
There are several research findings that we believe are important to take seriously not only by the teams of both candidate pairs but also by stakeholders in the 2019 Election. First, the context of the current presidential election contest is a residue of the sharp political polarization and politicization of identity issues that occurred during the 2014 Presidential Election and the 2017 Jakarta Gubernatorial Election. In other words, there is a kind of dynamic of contestation and polarization that is continuously maintained. Second, the electoral design that stipulates a presidential threshold also increases the intensity of political polarization, because politically it only opens up the opportunity for two candidates to emerge. Third, the industrial phenomenon of political consultants, influencers and buzzers in candidate digital campaigns. Besides playing a crucial role in determining the production of issues and the amplification of campaign content on digital platforms, their role also contributes to worsening political polarization and the politicization of identity issues. We can clearly see that every non-programmatic issue continues to be reproduced and glorified by the cyber army of each camp. Fourth, the simultaneous nature of the 2019 Election has resulted in the presidential election being more dominant and has marginalized attention to the legislative elections, including the DPR RI, DPD, and Provincial and Regency/City DPRD. Fifth, the media as a source of public information tends to have a preference for non-programmatic issues in its reporting.
Other conditions can be seen from the findings in three areas. The dominant campaign narrative at the national level actually marginalizes local issues in the campaigns of regional legislative candidates and political parties. TKD and BPD, which generally only forward content from the center, create issue framing that is not in accordance with the context and political constellation at the local level. This puts local legislative candidates in a complicated situation because political parties are divided between focusing on the legislative and presidential elections. Political parties and legislative candidates face a dilemma in managing presidential election campaign issues in electoral districts with diverse voter characteristics.
If the conditions from the findings above continue, the campaign that has been and will continue to be ongoing will not provide significant benefits for the voting public, especially for the group of undecided voters. The public has also shown a negative response to the rise of non-programmatic issues. From the two debates that have taken place, it is clear how the public wants a battle of ideas and concepts from each candidate. To that end, PUSKAPOL UI offers several recommendations to improve campaign quality during the remaining campaign period to ensure an election with integrity.
First, there is a need to strengthen coordination between the central and regional governments in the context of managing campaign issues. Local issues must be raised according to the context and needs of each region and not solely dominated by national issues. Second, each candidate’s campaign team is responsible for controlling the management of campaign issues to prevent information distortion and wild campaigns on social media. Third, the long campaign period that causes more political gimmicks to appear at the beginning and new programmatic narratives to emerge in the final months of the campaign period is not relevant as an excuse. Political parties should work early and continuously to understand the needs of their constituents so that throughout the campaign period, there is always substantive content on offer. Fourth, the importance of programmatic campaigns based on valid data and encouraging fact-checking to fill the public debate with data-based arguments so as to minimize the issue of identity politicization. For this strategy, the media and civil society groups need to actively participate in efforts to reduce the politicization of identity and create counter-narratives against the politicization of identity issues, hoax news, and hate speech.
Depok, March 1, 2019
Center for Political Studies, University of Indonesia
Download: Policy Brief – Managing Identity Politics
