Declining Trust in Political Party Versus Independent Candidate

The upcoming 2012 Jakarta Governor Election has become more interesting in that political parties started showing their support toward one name that is Fauzi Bowo. Additionally, there is a phenomenon where individual candidate who solely relies on public support to come forward as governor candidate without support from any political parties. At the same time, public trust in political party is declining. Survey result by Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) shows that public support for political party has diminished as consequence of public disappointment toward the stagnant government. “If today were the Election day, all political parties will experience the same decline compare to the 2009 general election because voters were disappointed toward all political parties and as a result they tend to disoriented in showing their support,” says Sunny Tanuwidjaya, researcher of CSIS as he described the CSIS survey result on 2012 National Politics in Jakarta, Monday February 13th 2012. Since most Jakarta people are politically literate, linear correlation of increasing support for independent candidate as a result of declined trust in political party is obvious. This phenomenon will not create healthier democracy instead it proves that quality of our democracy is declining and such condition must not be sustained. Therefore, the elites and party activists must improve and reorganized their organization in term of ideology, platform, regeneration and programs. It is interesting to observe that in the emergence of independent candidate in 2012 Jakarta Governor Election, there are figures who come forward as independent candidate using against-the-current way such as Faisal Basri and Biem Benjamin. They come forward based on massive support from Jakarta citizen without previously bribing them with money or nine kinds of basic needs (popularly known as Sembako which comprises of rice, sugar, oil)  while such practice has became a “common custom’ for the elites to gain political support from the society. From society’s point of view, accepting bribes shall be construed as numerous possibilities. One of many reasons is that the society has lost their hopes upon promises offered by political parties. They understood that the promises were not to be realized and therefore they were more receptive for “direct” and “consignation’ transaction which means that societies do not care whether the party will fight for their welfare or not anymore. As a matter of fact, the candidates never had the time to meet and greet with them let alone keeping their promises. Such tradition has been tried to be broken by the duo, Faisal Basri and Biem Benjamin by not giving any money or Sembako to people who gave their support through their ID card and petition. That they have to fight for society is a promise they should keep if they won the election and become their own moral obligation if they did not keep their promise as they won the election. The duo also establish new era of campaigning pattern by optimum internet and social media utilization. Such method has helped them to save campaigning cost in contrast with traditional method. Spreading ideas as their mission and vision through their website, Twitter, Facebook, Blog, and so on  has considerably minimized their budget without compromising the result in which they gained adequate support from public and mainstream media. With respect to campaign funding, the duo has tried to obtain the fund directly from public by organizing some events, such as dinner with Faisal Basri and Biem Benjamin at the Sahid Hotel several times ago. Tickets for the event were sold from 1 million rupiah to 10 million rupiah. The collected money was announced to the guess at the end of the event. This way the duo suggested that they would reject any financial support from businessmen who will twist their public policies in the future to match their own needs if they won the election. However,  the duo movement along with their team and supporting societies (Faisal designated this as social movement) will not run smoothly since their rival or those who feel threatened by the social movement reacted quite massively. Within social media context, for example, Twitter accounts specially designed to spread negative issues surrounding Faisal Basri have emerged. They issued negative remarks such as Faisal’s last name being Batubara, corruption within the National Mandate Party (popularly known as PAN) and much more. However such issues were ignored by public since there were no supporting evidences and moreover, the issues were spread from accounts whose owner was barely known. Observing the process of administration and people support factual verification on each individual candidate, it is obvious that KPU DKI will involve in arduous and almost impossible tasks. The problem lies in timing and high level of difficulties such as 1 month time framing for several levels, i.e.  Balloting Committee starts from Feb 14 to Feb 27. Factual verification starts from Feb 17 to Feb 27 while verification on District/ Sub-district Polling Committee level starts from Feb 28 to March 5 and lastly for City Electoral Committee level until March 12. During the process, after completing administration verification stage, General Election Committee or KPU will enter the factual stage. In factual stage, the Jakarta Governor Candidate in pair must present their supporter to each village within 9 days as scheduled by the Jakarta KPU. Subsequently, the next step will be drafting official reports. Before verification, after submitting support document to the KPUD for official registration, the individual candidate must submit the support document to each village to be included in the verification process. Subsequently, the individual candidate must present all societies who give their support to the candidates from each village to gain direct support within 9 days. Let us hope that such difficult process can be completed by individual candidates who hopefully struggle based on good will thus injecting positive nuance to the democracy process in Jakarta and Indonesia in general. If the so-called social movement by Faisal Basri and Biem Benjamin ran successfully, this in turn will serve as political learning for everyone about how to conduct clean political movement without deceiving public by distributing money and Sembako. Linear condition of public declining trust in political parties and the raise of individual candidates not particularly in Jakarta but also in some other areas should have been an eye opener for the elites of political parties that they need to balance their pragmatic interests with partiality to the societies. Such partiality must always be fought for in political life in a healthy democracy where political parties serve as media to channel people aspirations. This has became mandatory since democracy in Indonesia is heavily relies on political parties.