A local poll administrator (KPPS) serves a voter coming to a flooded polling station for the 2024 simultaneous regional elections in Medan, North Sumatra, on Nov. 27, 2024. According to the Medan Elections Commission (KPU), voting in 45 polling stations across the city was postponed due to a flood hitting the provincial capital. - Photo: Antara
JAKARTA: The country’s largest simultaneous regional head elections have been marred somewhat by low voter turnout, mostly due to disasters and political exhaustion following the eventful general election held earlier this year.
While there has yet to be an official count of the voters who cast their ballots in Wednesday's (Nov 27) elections, several regions reported a low voter turnout compared with February’s presidential and legislative election turnouts, with many voters abstaining from voting, a tradition known as golput.
One of these is Yashinta Kania, a data analyst from South Tangerang, Banten, who refused to go to the polling booths to cast a vote in the Banten gubernatorial and South Tangerang mayoral elections because she was “sick” of seeing familiar figures on the ballot.
“I was just frustrated to see the same names since the last time I voted,” she told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday, “and I heard the rival candidate also doesn’t seem that promising.”
Banten saw a competition between two gubernatorial candidates, popular former South Tangerang mayor Airin Rachmi Diany, who is part of a provincial political dynasty, clashed with Gerindra Party politician Andra Soni, who was nominated by parties of the Onward Indonesia Coalition (KIM) that supports President Prabowo Subianto’s government.
Meanwhile, the South Tangerang race saw incumbent Benyamin Davnie running for reelection against local politician Ruhamaben.
In Central Java, journalists Titis Anis and Kristi ended up not voting as they were busy covering the elections.
Kristi initially planned to vote, but she “did not have the time to change [her] voting locations”.
In order to cast votes outside one’s domicile, a voter had to get in touch with the local General Elections Commission (KPU) or local elections committee by Oct 28.
Disastrous hindrance Several other voters refrained from voting as their regions were affected by disasters.
Armiyanti, a mother-of-two in Medan, North Sumatra, could not go to her polling station because of the flooding that hit the city after heavy rain since Tuesday evening.
“I was too busy cleaning up my house to spare the time to vote,” she told the Post.
Election organisers expected the voter turnout in the province for this year’s simultaneous regional elections to be “very low”, said Aswin Diapari Lubis of the North Sumatra Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu).
A polling station in Medan, for example, only had half of the total 524 registered voters come and cast their votes on Wednesday.
He blamed the low turnout on a string of disasters hitting the province in recent weeks.
Aside from the flooding in Medan, several regencies in the province, such as Karo, had also been hit by landslides over the last weekend, killing at least 20, according to official figures on Tuesday.
“These disasters made people reluctant to go to polling stations,” the agency chairman said.
He estimated that only around 40 percent of over 10.7 million registered voters voted in Wednesday’s elections in North Sumatra, lower than the 63 percent turnout in the 2018 regional election.
Political fatigue?
Some voters opted not go to the polling stations due to weariness at having to vote again after only just participating in February’s elections.
“I don’t understand why the government asked us to participate in two simultaneous elections [in a year],” Haniefa Fithriani, 25, said.
Observers cited such “political fatigue” as the main cause of the seemingly low voter turnout in the regional elections.
“We saw how intense the February elections were, with all things related to the government and political controversies bugging our daily lives,” said Hadar Nafis Gumay of election watchdog Network for Democracy and Electoral Integrity (Netgrit).
“It’s surely draining for many to experience another election just nine months [after the first two].”
Since voters did not have enough time to recover from the fatigue from February’s elections, they did not make much effort to find out information about the regional head candidates, said election law expert Titi Anggraini of the University of Indonesia.
“Because they didn’t really know the candidates, they were discouraged from voting,” she said.
The political fatigue may have also echoed with the political elites, Hadar and Titi said, noting that some parties ended up having to back the candidates they did not want just to keep their previous alliance intact.
Such half-hearted consolidations may result in a disconnect between the people’s aspirations and figures nominated by the political parties.
Titi took Jakarta gubernatorial candidate Ridwan Kamil as an example.
The former West Java governor was popular and had a strong electability in West Java, but was instead forced to accept the nomination for Jakarta.
Preliminary results based on quick counts from pollsters as of Wednesday evening showed Ridwan trailing in second place behind his rival Pramono Anung.
[- Suherdjoko contributed to the story from Semarang]
