musang s.x.

Pemilu 2009: Act 1, Scenes Ad Nauseum

2009.05.18 17:20

So I guess we’ve come to the end of the first part in this whole charade called the Pemilu 2009 (Indonesia’s 2009 General Elections), with its endless scenes of political twists and turns, which had become even more bizarre ever since the April 9th legislative election.

And don’t expect an intermezzo anytime soon, coz we’re going directly on to the next part: the campaigning period of, and the actual, July 8th presidential election, which I presume will be similarly filled with their own ‘makes-you-wanna-kick-the-shit-out-of-their-faces’… er, let’s rephrase that in a milder-tempered way: with their own ‘rolling-eyes-inducing’ scenes.

So what have we come by during the first part of the freak show, which was the legislative election? Let’s make a recap on that:

• A turn-out of 104,099,785 eligible votes, or 60.8% out of 171,265,442 registered voters.
• A total of 17,488,581 (10.2%) votes were deemed non-eligible, which means
  another 49,677,076 (29%) voters either did not want to, or could not vote.

The total of non-voters tops even that of Partai Demokrat (which garnered the most of the eligible votes, as we’ll see later) –more so if there were voters who deliberately made their votes non-eligible (crossing out the ballot from edge to edge, or scribbling “FUCK THIS ELECTION” on it with a big red marker, for example). But then I guess 60% eligible votes makes the whole election ‘eligible’ enough.

And that’s just the point for the politicians. They wouldn’t care less if the election process was so crappy, as long as it’s ‘legally eligible’, ‘fair’, ‘free’, and they fulfill the minimum requirements for the next (power-grabbing) step: the presidential election.

So there we have it, after a series of political hype and drama, our final point of recap for the moment:

• Three presidential hopefuls, with their respective running mates.
  • Jusuf Kalla and Wiranto (nicknamed JK-Win)
  • Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Boediono (SBY-Boediono)
  • Megawati Sukarnoputri and Prabowo (Mega-Pro)

I can’t deny that Boediono is the one I hold the most respect towards. He may be the one factor that can actually make all this election crap into something worthwhile. As long as he doesn’t get sucked in the dirty world of politics, I guess.

Unfortunately, SBY-Boediono will be supported by a coalition that includes the same hypocrite assholes that had so-strongly rejected him on grounds that were nothing but crap. All their shit only shows their power-hungry ambitions. But in the end, they remained whoring on to SBY-Demokrat as they didn’t want to lose out the chance of staying in power. Oh, yeah, and I’ll name the dip-shits: it was PKS.

As for JK-Win and Mega-Pro, I don’t know… They just sound like popular bicycle/motorcycle brands sold in Indonesia. Not to mention their already negatively-perceived persona and legacies, all of which can’t be fixed in an instant with just populist jargons and lip-service.

Anyway… Here’s a breakdown of the legislative election results, showing the number of eligible votes and the number of seats in the House of Representatives that each party got. The parties shown are those which passed the ‘parliamentary treshold’ of getting 2.5% of the total eligible votes. And just for comparison, there’s also results from the previous 2004 election.

(This will hopefully shed light as well on the acronyms of party names previously mentioned :p But sorry, I can’t discuss about everything on current Indonesian politics here. That would be too long and twisted and complicated and convoluted… :p)

Compiled data from KPU (Komisi Pemilihan Umum, the General Elections Committee)

Make what you may out of the figures, but I guess they already speak for themselves. (Hint, hint: the ‘quality’ of the election in terms of voter turn-out?)

Btw, the votes obtained by the ‘Other Parties‘ can literally be regarded as being thrown to the trash bin. It doesn’t matter if they collectively amount to 18% of the total eligible votes, they are by each individual party not enough to secure any seats in the House.

This means that the 560 House members-to-be will only represent 85,051,132 voters –or only 49.6% (less than half) of all the registered voters, and even only some 37% of Indonesia’s 230 million population.

Yup, that’s the House of ‘Representatives’ for us. As if the current celebrity-filled-plagued House had anything to do with us as well.

However… as these other smaller parties have eventually gravitated as well to the constellations of party coalitions for the presidential election, I guess their votes will add up to the represented figure.

The General Elections Law states that a party or a coalition of parties can nominate a presidential candidate if they secure a minimum of 25% of the eligible popular votes, OR 20% of the House seats.

According to this, Demokrat could’ve actually nominated SBY on its own, but I guess a coalition is still needed to provide better footing in the House. In the end, Demokrat was joined by some 20 other parties to nominate incumbent President SBY for re-election, with Boediono as his running mate.

Meanwhile, Kalla and Wiranto was nominated with the main support of their respective parties, Golkar and Hanura. Megawati and Prabowo became the third pair in the presidential race, with backing from their own parties as well, PDIP and Gerindra.

Being the world of politics, anything can still happen now (although the presidential candidacy pairs are already fixed). It just depends on what’s the interest. So I guess we’ll just have to bear another endless scenes of politicking until the presidential election is over. And we have a new government, yay… *cynical smirk, and then a long sigh*

Related posts:

• Pemilu 2009: Act 2, TGIO
• Out loud with Anwar Nasution :))
• Pretext for Mass Murder
• Buku “Ilusi Negara Islam”

musangsx | indonesia,politics