Campaigning vs. Buying Votes

As a manifestation of the sovereignty of the people, general elections are a means by which to choose public representatives or to choose both legislative representatives (regional and national) and the head of government.

KOMPAS/LASTI KURNIA

Ramlan Surbakti (third left)

As a manifestation of the sovereignty of the people, general elections are a means by which to choose public representatives (in countries that have adopted a parliamentary system) or to choose both legislative representatives (regional and national) and the head of government (in countries that have adopted the presidential system).

Those participating in the general elections to attain public office as representatives of the people may comprise political parties, candidate pairs or individual candidates. A general election can therefore be formulated as a political contest among its participants to compete for seats in the legislative and the executive.

The electoral competition occurs through general election campaigns. In such campaigns, the election participants compete against one another to persuade voters to elect them as their representative or as the head of government. As the driving force of representative democracy, political parties nurture prospective leaders for offering them to voters during an election campaign.

Political parties also draw up public policy plans based on an in-depth study of the people’s aspirations and guided by the party’s ideology, which are then offered to voters during the campaign period.

As the driving force of representative democracy and the bridge between the people and the state, electoral parties (P4) should try to persuade voters by offering a sound policy plan (vision, mission and programs) and be offering candidates with proven track records on their integrity and competence.

Law No. 7/2017 on General Elections stipulates several forms of campaigns that electoral parties are permitted to use. Four forms of campaigns are permitted starting three days after the official list has been determined on the registered candidates for the House of Representatives (DPR), Regional Representatives Council (DPD), Provincial/Regional Legislative Councils (DPRDs) and the presidential-vice presidential candidate pairs.

The four permitted campaign types are closed events, public meet-and-greets, public dissemination of campaign materials and paraphernalia, and public installation of promotional campaign materials. Election advertisements in print media, electronic media and on the internet, as well as public events, may run over a 21-day period, which is followed by a cooling-off period.

The General Elections Commission (KPU) facilitates the procurement and installation of campaign materials, the placement of campaign ads in the mass media, and the organization of the presidential debates, using funds from the State Budget (APBN).

The campaign management, messages and finances for DPR and DPRD candidates running in the 2019 general election can be run under one of two options. One, the electoral parties may manage the campaigns of their legislative candidates through the following forms: (a) campaign ads in print media, electronic media and the internet; (b) installation of promotional campaign materials; and (c) public dissemination of campaign materials. These three campaign forms are also facilitated by the KPU using state funds.

This is what distinguishes the 2019 election campaign from the 2009 and 2014 campaigns, as the individual candidates carried out their own campaigns at their own expense in the two prior general elections. To meet the campaign requirements, each electoral party has submitted its vision, mission and programs as campaign materials to the KPU.

Two, individual DPR and DPRD candidates may manage their own campaigns in the form of closed events, door-to-door campaigns, and installation of promotional campaign materials. The individual candidates must fund these three campaign forms independently. Because of the long campaign period, the DPR, DPD and DPRD candidates are not directly “embarking on” this type of campaign.

As can be seen in many public places, the DPR, DPD and DPRD candidates have started their campaigns by installing posters bearing their portraits with an invitation to vote for them. Also different from prior campaigns, these campaign posters also bear the photographs of the presidential pair that the legislative candidate is supporting.

Apparently the candidates believe in the “coattail effect” theory in political science, that voters will choose their representatives from those political parties that back the voter’s preferred presidential candidate.

Vision, mission and programs

As mandated by Law No. 7/2017 on General Elections, each legislative candidate must use their party\'s vision, mission and programs as their campaign materials. In the 2014 general election, it was very rare that a legislative candidate used a party\'s vision, mission and programs to persuade voters at closed events and door-to-door events. What happened was that most 2009 candidates and especially 2014 candidates campaigned on personal messages and programs. This is why understanding of a political party\'s vision, mission and programs is rare among DPR and DPRD legislators.

Why did prior candidates not use their electoral parties’ vision, mission and programs as their campaign materials? First, the formulation of the electoral parties’ vision, mission, and programs are too general, consisting only of ideal prescriptions for a state and without concrete or measurable programs for attaining this ideal. The vision, mission and programs emphasize poverty, declining purchasing power, unemployment and inequality, but they are not accompanied by concrete programs to resolve the issues.

Second, the vision, mission, and programs are generic because the electoral parties are not aware of or do not comprehend their constituents’ problems. The electoral parties do not understand the real problems of their constituents because the parties are not fulfilling their function of political representation. Political parties and legislators do not understand the kinds of poverty the people face, the kinds of unemployment the people face, the cause behind the declining purchasing power or the inequalities that exist in society, because they are not substantively fulfilling their function of political representation.

The electoral parties formally claim to have fulfilled their function of political representation and even demand the relevant funds, simply because they gained legislative seats through the general election.

Third, most legislative candidates lack understanding of party policies because they were not groomed systematically by an electoral party on the party’s ideology or political competencies, like public persuasion. Therefore, they lack ideological sensitivity because the party ideology appears only in visual form (images, colors, photos of party figures and registration numbers), and also tend to avoid substantive campaigns and instead use pragmatic campaign methods.

Fourth, the candidates view voters as money-grubbers or believe that they can be bought, so rather than offering development programs, they offer cash and basic goods. Candidates do not participate in most door-to-door events, which are frequently run by “operators” that the candidates have hired to do the job.

Door-to-door campaigns run throughout a campaign period, with the final round occurring before voting day with a larger amount of cash and basic goods.

Nearly all legislators elected to DPR and DPRD seats in 2014 claimed to have spent billions of rupiah, not mere millions, on their campaigns. What kind of campaign would require such a large amount of money, if not vote buying?

The electoral parties’ vision, mission and programs should be the same as those of the presidential pair they back. The President and the House make laws and the state budget jointly, so an effective government can be realized if the president’s political agenda (public policy plans) are the same as the political agenda of the electoral parties that form their proponents/supporters in the DPR.

Therefore, the DPR candidates would have substantive campaign materials if they used the vision, mission and programs of the presidential candidate pair their parties supported. If the electoral party’s presidential pair is elected and the parties gain majority House seats, one of the factors for creating an effective presidential system of government will be realized.

Several notes

Three notes are necessary here. First, the campaign ads, materials and public campaigns of each political party participating in the 2019 general election will undoubtedly not contain the messages of the legislative candidates as individuals, but will instead contain the messages of their electoral parties as institutions. The characteristic ideologies of each electoral party should be evident in their campaign messages.

Second, the campaign funds for each legislative candidate will apparently decrease, because individual legislative campaigns are not included among the two types of campaigns the KPU/APBN facilitates. Third, next year’s general election does not accommodate party conventions for selecting legislative candidates as an approved campaign form, as they were in 2014.

Legislative candidates are unlikely to use party conventions in their 2019 campaigns, as most candidates are unskilled in public speaking (because they are not party-groomed candidates) and prefer the more pragmatic form of door-to-door campaigns – which they do not need to be a part of, since door-to-door campaigns are delegated to “field operators”.

The 2014 election campaign budget that was reported to be large was used to cover the campaign organizers’ transportation and meals as well as for producing campaign souvenirs, but not for holding party conventions. The budget that was reportedly intended for holding party conventions was apparently used to buy votes during door-to-door campaigns.

Election observers and the Elections Supervisory Body (Bawaslu) must pay special attention to such campaign practices.

Ramlan Surbakti, Comparative politics professor, School of Social and Political Sciences, Airlangga University, Surabaya; member, Indonesian Academy of Sciences