It’s the year of 2024. Election year, the quinquennial party of the democratic circus that is the Indonesian General Elections. This year, an eighth president of Indonesia will be chosen by the people, or will it?
Citing Republika’s article from July 3rd 2023, 56.45% of voters in 2024 belong in the Generation Z and Millennial cohorts. I, along with a significant chunk of the 20 or so percent that make up the Gen Z voters list, are first time voters. This presents a unique challenge and target for politicians and their backing parties to hit. And so far, it’s gone to shit. All of the absurdities I have single-handedly experienced being active on Twitter over the last few months are so far beyond what past elections have had. It’s unprecedented and I have a few words to say about what the Indonesian political hellscape and it’s electoral circus is like, both as a first time voter, and as a registered election staffer.
It’s only been the penultimate week of January at the time of writing, three or so weeks away from the election, but I feel like there’s so much absurdity and chaos in this election season enough to write into a full article on here.
Campaigning for Nothing
For the past half a year or so, the circus that is the election season has started. Where capitalistic objects known as billboards don’t sell products or services, but faces and names to vote for. It’s a thing you’d grow up to expect living with it every five years. Having big faces of people who seek so desperately a spot in government, practically wasting money begging people to subconsciously give their vote behind the booth. I always see these years, these democracy-induced year long jerk-off competitions, as stupid and wasteful. For one, we can all agree that the massive rows of flags lining up bridges and overpasses in cities around the country is a zero-thought effort to subconsciously plant their colors and logos in the minds of commuters. It’s an eyesore that what it is. But even then, they care less.
It doesn’t even stop here, the billboards. Oh the dreaded billboards. Ones that once clutter up our skylines, being capitalist pets that sell us products whenever we use the roads that we so painfully pay for through taxes everyday. They don’t sell you food or brands in these years no, they sell faces. Faces that often come with significantly undesirable track records. Those who rose up through the ranks of the elitist clubs that is political parties in Indonesia, reaching a point where they are chosen to be their representatives in parliament if they’re so chosen by the people. Faces everywhere, almost none of them you’d recognize before because who would really? Everywhere you go, you are not a single kilometer away from the faces of a politician you never heard of trying to be relatable. It’s a big r/fellowkids competition almost, especially in years where the majority of voters will be the younger generations like it is this time around. I am one of that majority.
Like the visual garbage that it is is one thing, but me personally, as a graphic designer and visual communications enthusiast, it’s more than shit. It offends me. The way that these ads, these pleas for votes is presented, it hurts me to watch. It defies all laws of visual communication. Why? The layouts. Just look at any one of them I’m embedding here. The basic layouts consist of a big ass photo of the candidate, their names, their electoral district and level, their numbers, a quote, and their party icons. That’s it. I feel like there’s one critical thing missing from these which is why I hate it so much. There’s no way for potential gray area voters to have a reason to vote for them. There are zero mentions of what they believe in, what issues they will voice their stances in parliament, WHAT THEY ARE CAMPAIGNING FOR.
This annoys me to a significant level because the whole point of campaigning and democracy is to have the people vote and voice out their beliefs and visions for the state, not pick people based off of feeling or looks. I like to overanalyze if you can’t figure out yet, I have diagnosed ADHD. This way of advertising your candidacy only makes me mad, I feel like it’s such a waste of money and effort to do. All I see is a smug asshole who’s not grounded to reality, seeking fame and power, and more importantly, money. How am I supposed to use my democratic rights when the system itself does not accomodate or encourage democratic campaigning.
Even if the billboards come with actual messages and campaigning material that matter, they’re usually shit and misconstrued. I have this one candidate’s billboard in mind, I see it whenever I commute to campus. A candidate of PKS, pandering to Gen Z. How you may ask? Tea. Iced Tea. I remember verbatim that his billboards would say “Don’t be worried, Gen Z! Tea has a chance to go worldwide.” with his smug ass face under it holding a custom printed plastic drink cup filled with iced tea. This one billboard pisses me off so greatly.
Tea, really? The one drink that you can find almost everywhere in the world. Drank by the Brits, the Taiwanese people, the Japanese, among many others. Even used by the Americans as a big fuck you to their colonial friends across the pond when they make the world’s largest tea mukbang by throwing tea into the waters of Boston. The one drink that even in Indonesia has many glocalised forms. You know, the one drink that you can get with boba, or with milk, or pulled so to say. My point is, what the fuck are you trying to say? Yes, tea has a chance to go global, in fact it has been for the past few centuries. That’s just stupid. Don’t get me started on his campaign materials that is just his smug face mewing in black and white with some graphs that supposedly show the things that Gen Z is most worried about… without giving his proposed solutions or the sources of such data. I’d grab some photos of these billboards so you can laugh at them yourself but Tembalang is 30 minutes away at the least one way. And Semarang is hot asf so yeah.
Not to mention the amount of post-campaigning waste that is generated after all of the jerk-offs have been finished. Thousands of liters of potentially environmentally hazardous ink, printed on tons of non-biodegradable plastic fibers used to make every single one of these campaigning materials. Tons of bamboo and wood, weathered down in the Indonesian heat and humidity, usually just burned to ash, adding more carbon into our already fragile atmosphere. All of that money, used for campaigning, which is pretty significant in the grand scheme of things mind you, wasted as single use eyesores. Sometimes put up so haphazardly it directly disadvantages certain people including sidewalk users and some building owners whose walls or fences get used as big cork boards for unprecedented campaign materials.
Let’s not talk about the whole AI bullshit also, I’ll have an aneurysm and this article is long enough as it is. Simply said, 01 appreciates his art creators and hires them for the campaign itself; 02 uses AI art like a fucking chump with zero creativity; and 03 pays the artists who makes fanart of him to make personal campaigning materials.
The Owl, The War Criminal, and The Penguin
Going into the juicy core of the election season itself. The candidates. This year, we get to choose between an academic ex-Governor whose name is ridden with accusations of identity politics and corruption, the incumbent Minister of Defense whose ridden with a dark past consisting of humanitarian disasters and countless acts of crimes against humanity, and an ex-Governor whose name is connected with the oligarchical center of political parties and the incumbent presidency along with some controversial acts as governor. Alongside these three, a goofy ahh Islamist political party leader with a blunderbuss of a mouth, an illegally registered nepo baby who got his position as a vice presidential candidate through nepotism in the nation’s constitutional court for being the son of the incumbent president, and a professor whose in all fairness is just fine though a bit old.
Fun, you might think? It’s just a big game of “lesser evils” at this point. You choose who out of these three pairings would give you the best shot at running Indonesia in the right direction in the near future. I personally prefer candidate number one. I have been extremely vocal about it on Twitter because I stand by it. Anies Baswedan, an academic with a history of teaching International Relations (my favorite, i know). One whose name has been riddled with the black campaigns and allegations brought forward by right wing extremism in his time running as the Governor of the Jakarta Special Administrative Region. He was faced with identity politics, being supported by and is supportive of the far-right Islamist group FPI. Running against Ahok, a Chinese-Indonesian Catholic. This sparked black campaigns from both sides, framing each other of religious slander and misconduct. Forever tarnishing the names of both Anies and Ahok. He pushed through and won the election, becoming one of the best Governors in the history of Jakarta. Revitalising their public transport system with programs like TransJakarta and Jaklingko, building big projects to bring the Jakarta name into the international limelight through the Jakarta International Stadium and Jakarta International e-Prix Circuit located in the coasts of Jakarta near Ancol. With those projects, he made sure that the people of Kampung Bayam, displaced by those massive projects, get compensated by building well thought of apartment complexes with subsidized funding. The people thanked him for it. He’s running with Cak Imin, the political party leader of PKB, one of the few steadfast opposition parties we have in parliament. He was given the honorary K-pop stan treatment of representative animals with an Owl as his rep, pushed forward by the grassroots movements of the Twitter account Anies Bubble (@aniesbubble), a parody of fan pages that share and give updates of K-pop idols on apps like Bubble or Weverse and Olppaemi Project (@olpproject), a parody of fan pages who coordinate fan events and support tributes to their favorite idols through videotron ad placements, cupsleeve parties in cafes, and hiring food trucks at events.
Then there’s candidate pair number two. The reason Indonesia hasn’t ratified many international laws on genocide and crimes against humanity, and the presidential nepo baby. Prabowo has tried to run for presidency for four times now. first being the vice president to Megawati losing to SBY, then running as president three consecutive times against Jokowi and his two vice presidents. Losing all three by a landslide. He’s taking an aggressive approach this time around, kneeling to superiority by getting close to Jokowi and his family, using his high acceptance rate during presidency as fuel to fire his electability. Even going as far as getting the son of the president to run as his vice presidential candidate, as illegal as it is, but power corrupts so it happened anyway. It seems to work, many a campaign materials used by his team mention Jokowi, using his political moves as weapons of coercion to make people want him to win. It works for the stupid majority it seems, with his rebranding tactic using AI art and “gemoy” dances to frame himself as a relatable, cute, and friendly candidate. Far from the true reality behind his name and actions. Somehow, out of all sane thought, his numbers in the surveys stood still, in the 49% or so, running close to the point of a decisive victory without a second stage of the election. It’s working, and Gen Z is at the forefront of the problem. I am not even going to mention his partner.
Let’s not leave out the third pair here. Ganjar Pranowo and Mahfud MD. These two are the neutrals, the opposite energy of 01. Ganjar being the porn-enjoying chad he is and Mahfud being the calm and collected professor. Ganjar himself has ran Central Java well, he modernised so much from this province that I can say I like his leadership. Not without some controversies of course, but hey… It’s politics. Overall he’s a fine old guy with a great sense of humor and taste in entertainment. He’s surprisingly chill too and his r/fellowkids gambit is not as cringy as others would do. Their team followed up with their own version of the grassroots youth movements with Tim Penguin Nasional, following the prescription of Ganjar’s fursona as a Penguin, specifically in reference to the meme association of the Penguins of Madagascar with porn-related goofs. Ascribing Ganjar, or Goonjar in this instance as the “Ketua Bokep”, a lovely yet vulgar-ly funny title. He has embraced it very openly and well by being active on his own Twitter daily. The team has since given Mahfud his own fursona as the Turtle from Finding Nemo.
The fallacies of Indonesian Democracy
If you’ve been around the Indonesian internet sphere, you might have heard about the words “buzzer”. These buzzers are people who are paid — usually by big companies or figures — to generate buzz in the social media hellscape. It’s a big underground business, with many buzzing agencies running on Telegram to give out “jobs” to either give positive sentiments on the client or negatively impact any positive sentiment posts or voices that is directed at their opposition. These paid defenders so to say make lucrative amounts of money, and clearly in Indonesia, money is a corrupting commodity.
Big name celebrities, rich as they may be. Smaller, but far reaching viral accounts on Twitter, as critical as they used to be. All reached out to and paid by the campaign teams of candidate 02. Offering them to sell their soul to dickriding Prabowo for enormous counts of cash, up into the billions. The amounts that the majority of Indonesians will never even have the chance to see in their lifetimes. It’s so stupid to watch people sell their souls to defend and protect with all their might the many blunders and stupid decisions of a war criminal. Sending out countless tweets accusing the opposition of slander or directly accusing them of making up hoaxes to protect a man who self-admittedly owns 500000 hectares of land within Indonesia. Just about bigger than the entirety of the Island of Bali.
It baffles me how much these people would do to get all of that money. While at the same time that presidential candidate say on camera to not take money politics seriously. The amount of hypocrisy and the stupid blunders that they make, in presidential debates both Prabowo and he who I hate to name. Being unethical and rule-agnostic, showing off their true selves, taking off the Gemoy mask and going full blown dictator even before he is elected by the people.
What scares me is that even though all of these blunders and public misconducts happen live, on camera, on public TV, streamed to millions on YouTube by many channels, the numbers don’t budge. The surveys say that Gen Z is playing a big role in that, and TikTok explains why. Like I have known that Indonesian people are very stupid yeah, our average IQ if you want to use that metric is around the 70–80s, borderline mentally retarded. Intelligence is one thing, but ignorance to the lack of justice served to the victims of Prabowo’s actions back in the 1990s and the many PR blunders that they make on live TV is another. Mass black campaigns, making teenage girls cry to show “solidarity” at Prabowo because he was in the middle of a debate and got a rebuttal of facts. Ignoring past and current mistakes, the way he is absent in his MoD duties and even using his position to gain illegal oligarchical support within the government to campaign for him, the way he and his vice presidential candidate breaks rules of the KPU Debates live on TV, openly mocking with zero hilarity and self awareness both Anies and Ganjar in front of his supporters, expecting them not to record. Then saying that we should all be nice to each other on another event. It’s just horrifying to see that my cohorts can be this blunt and inconsiderate. The way his supporters act mirrors him, mocking the people of Rohingya, dumping and possibly killing them with disregard to our Right to Protect as human beings.
All of this, and more. Allowed to happen by the incumbent president, Jokowi, the one who even dipped is toes in supporting and washing Prabowo’s ass blatantly after the third presidential debate. All the while Bawaslu and KPU just sit still, receiving countless false reports of slander and misconduct sent by the dickriders of 02 against both 01 and 03. Even to the point that Bawaslu and KPU themselves also getting reported to whatever higher organisation they bow to (none, they are the highest organisations in relation to the elections) when they try to enforce their ruling in the case of the whole billboards in the “Welcome to Batam” sign.
Like I am just baffled and scared of how stupid the Indonesian system is. My feelings of wanting to flee this country has never been amplified so loudly, hoping that change wins in this election and I’d grow loving towards Indonesia and it’s government again and hoping the worst for the oligarchy and political dynasty that is 02.
I don’t know what else I want to say, this article has gone on for too long, I wrote this in two days. Right after the fourth presidential debate last night. I hope that if you support 02 and you somehow read this, you wake up and choose either 01 or 03. It’s time for a change.
previously posted on Medium at https://medium.com/@fjello/democratically-absurd-7a225f6a742f
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