The aspirations of the people should be heard. independent media that carry out professional coverage are expected to be an antidote to biased coverage.
By
IGNATIUS HARYANTO
·4 minutes read
KURNIA YUNITA RAHAYU
(From left to right) Formappi researcher Lucius Karus, Researcher at the Political Research Center for the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) Mouliza Kristhopher Donna Sweinstani, and General Elections Commission member August Mellaz, in a discussion "Socialization of Political Parties towards the 2024 Election" at the KPU office, Jakarta, Friday (24/2/2023).
Kompas is expected to be able to cover the 2024 elections, the process for which has already started this year, comprehensively, objectively and independently. As an influential media outlet, Kompas should also play a role in the development of democracy in this country.
Such a hope came to the surface in the Kompas Ombudsman Forum, which specifically discussed coverage ahead of the 2024 elections on Friday. The topic of the elections has been discussed many times in the Kompas Ombudsman Forum. At each of the events of this celebration of democracy, the ombudsman oversees editorial work, evaluates and at the same time recommends various perspectives in order to strengthen the completeness of the news, professionalism and independence.
This time, a year ahead of the 2024 elections, Kompas' editorials have been intense in bringing forth various journalistic works. Since the beginning of last week, for example, Kompas has published the results of the National Leadership Survey, starting from evaluating and observing the public's assessment of the government's performance today to studying the electability of political parties, as well as the electability of a number of future presidential candidates and vice-presidential candidates.
Apart from the coverage that has been so comprehensive, in my opinion, there is still a lack of coverage in Kompas in the period leading up to the 2024 elections of the candidates for members of the legislature such as the House of Representatives and Regional Legislative Councils (DPRD) and Regional Representative Councils (DPD). We certainly hope that there will be many figures with superior capacities coming to the fore as representatives of the people in the future.
Indeed, our legislative members are still far from ideal: the large amount of funds spent in order to run as candidates for people's representatives, the high dependence on association with political parties rather than the personal attributes of the legislators, are part of the phenomenon that often leads to politics being beyond public rationality. If we examine the performance of the House, especially in terms of making laws, the 2019-2024 House outnumbered the 2014-2019 House (105 laws) and the 2009-2014 House (130 laws) (source: www.setneg.go.id).
We certainly hope that there will be many figures with superior capacities coming to the fore as representatives of the people in the future.
The figures above only refer to the productivity of law-making, but if we investigate further, many of the laws that are produced are regional expansion laws.
At the beginning of each year, hundreds of draft laws are included in the National Legislation Program, but no more than 20 percent of them are realized. Not to mention that we see that the various laws that were later passed were problematic, both in terms of substance and the process of drafting them, such as the Job Creation Law and the Criminal Code.
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Modern authoritarianism
In another discussion, Herlambang P Wiratraman, lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, who was a guest speaker at the most recent Ombudsman Forum, pointed out that elections were a source of power for modern authoritarianism, where political cartelization and systemic corruption occurred in the political organs of state institutions and parties.
From the various elections that have been held, the direction of strengthening the presidential system has become clearer, and this, according to Herlambang, is more related to the extent to which the elected president/vice president can accommodate the interests of the coalition cartel and policies that are friendly to cartel powers.
A number of reviews from political analysts at home and abroad have exposed a decline in democracy in Indonesia, and elections that should be a means to make the country more democratic have fallen into - in the view of Antony Lee, the head of the Politics, Law and Human Rights Desk of Kompas - a procedural democracy rather than substantial democracy. The more elections are held, the people and their political elites should become politically more mature. However, this is not always the case.
In this non-ideal situation, Kompas still has to serve its readers to provide accurate, reliable and independent information. In various cases, Kompas can also be trapped in the interests of the candidates, namely their followers who often protest if the narrative presented by the daily is different from their wishes. There is no other choice, but Kompas must be more transparent about its coverage and reporting process.
In the upcoming elections, Kompas is expected to provide more comprehensive information regarding the candidates for the House and DPRD or DPD members, maps of political forces in a number of regions and also how political party consolidation is carried out.
However, the aspirations of the people should be heard. Apart from the survey results that have been presented, a more qualitative picture also needs to be recorded and conveyed to political stakeholders.
Reflecting on the facts that appear, to this day we still see the phenomenon of partisan media defending the interests of media owners and those who are leaders of political parties. It is difficult for the public to trust this kind of media because its content is biased in favor of the political interests of the media owner. For this reason, independent media that carry out professional coverage are expected to be an antidote to biased coverage.
