11 - Vote-buying in Indonesia's 2014 Elections: The Other Side of the Coin

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Vote-buying in Indonesian elections is certainly nothing new. Since the days of Suharto, serangan fajar (dawn attack) — which refers to the effort of bribing voters to vote for a particular party conducted in the early hours on polling day — has continued to play an important role to this day. Since the fall of Suharto's New Order in 1998 however, there are two important trends to note. On the one hand, the predictable effects of vote-buying may have been reduced by greater awareness amongst voters, as they now enjoy the freedom to vote and know they can benefit by taking the bribe and still vote according to their own preference. At the same time, parties have quickly realized that vote-buying is expensive and probably not very effective.

In the current electoral system, candidates are at the centre of the voting process. Put simply, candidates largely run and fund their own campaigns, and they face tough competition from those not only from other parties, but also from their own parties, to win seats. As such they have been forced to choose methods they deem most efficient in grabbing votes amongst the electorate to which they are largely unknown. One simple way to do this is to attract votes with material benefits, which has resulted in large-scale vote-buying. The 2014 elections have demonstrated that this phenomenon has evolved to be more extensive, sophisticated, and better organized than before. Indeed, various observations have strongly indicated that, compared to the 2009 elections, the scale and extent of money politics in this year's elections have been remarkable. An independent observer has used the words “massive, vulgar, and brutal” to describe the extent of transactional politics during the elections. The wide-ranging cases that have been reported featured most notably the door-to-door approach, where typically voters would be handed an envelope containing a specific candidate's name and a certain amount of money to persuade them to vote for that particular person. Less-direct and more innovative methods are plenty, including interest-free loans, free blood tests, plant seeds for farmers, insurance for motorbike taxis, and lucky draws offering freezers and even a Hajj trip.

Vote-buying also takes place at different stages of the campaign. Candidates provide gifts as a way to introduce themselves to voters. These could then be followed up by hand-outs at mass rallies, and donations to build or improve community facilities.