The presidential campaign season in Indonesia officially began yesterday and all four candidates attended a ceremony at the National Monument (Monas) in Jakarta yesterday to pledge that it would be a peaceful one (complete with doves).
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The event, which was organized by the General Election Commission (KPU), involved incumbent President Joko Widodo and his running mate Ma’ruf Amin, as well as their rivals Prabowo Subianto and his running mate Sandiaga Uno, signing a declaration promising that their campaigns would be run fairly and peacefully, and not include the use of hoaxes, attacks on race or religion, or money politics.
While certainly a nice gesture, the declaration is hardly a guarantee that either tickets’ official campaigns or their supporters will fight fairly during the hotly contested race, and there are already indications that religious and racial attacks could play a larger role in the race than we expected.
It’s definitely not a guarantee that the election will be drama-free, as demonstrated by the spectacle caused yesterday by former President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who came to Monas to attend the peace declaration ceremony but left soon after arriving, allegedly in protest against the KPU.
Representatives of the Democratic Party, of which SBY is the chairperson, said that the former president was protesting the KPU for allowing supporters of Jokowi to violate the rules of the event, which was supposed to feature only a small number of party logos and supporter signs to prevent it from becoming too politicized. They said SBY was upset by how many Projo (Pro-Jokowi) signs and logos could be seen at Monas.
The KPU responded to the accusation by saying that they only had limited control over what supporters from the general public could bring to the event.
However, it looks like what really made SBY walk out of the event was an act of perceived disrespect by Jokowi’s supporters.
“When we passed a group of Pak Jokowi’s supporters, they shouted at Pak SBY’s group improperly, and we consider it to be disrespectful,” Ferdinand Hutahaean, the chairman of the Democratic Party’s legal aid division, told Tempo. His party has demanded that the Projo supporters apologize to SBY for their actions.
SBY and the Democratic Party are supporting the Prabowo-Sandiaga ticket, despite Prabowo passing on the former president’s son, Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, as his VP pick. While the support seemed reluctant at first, SBY and Agus have recently said that they will be playing active roles in campaigning for Prabowo.
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