TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - There is increasing intimidation of regional leaders and village heads to persuade them to support Prabowo and Gibran. The police and prosecutors are threatening them with prosecution for corruption.
The lack of neutrality of law enforcement officers and their efforts to work for the victory of Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka in the 2024 presidential election is becoming increasingly apparent. There has been widespread and organized intimidation of regional leaders and village heads in Central and East Java.
The latest incident happened at the 2023 United Village National Gathering at the Gelora Bung Karno Stadium in Jakarta on November 19. Thousands of village heads together with their officials from eight organizations stated support for the Prabowo-Gibran pairing. Gibran, the oldest son of President Joko Widodo, attended the massive event.
These regional heads and their officials, some from East Java and Central Java, attended because they were brought there by the police. Law enforcement officers threatened that anyone who refused would be charged with embezzling village funds. A village head from Bangkalan Regency, West Java, was even summoned by police for allegedly supporting another presidential candidate. Because of concerns about being named a suspect, he switched his support to Prabowo-Gibran.
Village funds are an effective instrument to attract and put pressure on village heads. In 2023, the government has allocated Rp70 trillion (around US$4.5 billion) for 74,954 villages in 434 regencies and cities. From 2015 to 2021, no less than Rp433.8 billion (US$3 million) of village funds was embezzled. A total of 729 village heads and officials were named suspects for this embezzlement.
As well as the police, prosecutors have always been involved in intimidation. A regional head from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) in Central Java was pressed by a prosecutor not to support Ganjar Pranowo-Mahfud Md. In Jakarta, Junior Attorney General for Intelligence, Reda Manthovani, is known to have asked the General Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) to investigate an event organized by a prospective legislative candidate from the National Awakening Party (PKB) in North Sumatra that displayed a banner showing Anies Baswedan and Muhaimin Iskandar.
There has been considerable intimidation by the police and prosecutors in Central Java and East Java because these two provinces are centers of support for the PDI-P, the party that nominated Ganjar Pranowo and Mahfud Md. as presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Naturally, the Prabowo-Gibran campaign team wants to reduce the vote share of their rivals in these two provinces.
Several important positions in Central Java are now held by people close to Jokowi or senior members of the party coalition supporting Prabowo and Gibran, for example, the acting governor of Central Java, Comr. Gen. Nana Sudjana. In 2010, he was the Police Chief of Solo, hometown of Jokowi and Gibran. And the Central Java Police Chief, Insp. Gen. Ahmad Luthfi used to be the Chief of Solo Resort Police. The Commander of the IV/Diponegoro Area Military Command, Maj. Gen. Widi Prasetijono, is Jokowi’s former adjutant.
Meanwhile in East Java, President Jokowi appointed Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s former adjutant, Insp. Gen. Iman Sugianto, as East Java Police Chief after the Democrat Party announced it was joining the Prabowo-Gibran coalition in October. East Java Governor Khofifah Indar Parawansa is due to retire this month, and she will be replaced by a person chosen by Jakarta.
This intimidation is a result of Jokowi’s lack of confidence in the ability of Prabowo-Gibran to win the 2024 election. Given the intimidation in various regions, it is difficult to hope that the election will be honest and fair. As previously suspected, Jokowi is becoming increasingly tempted to use his authority to ensure the victory of his son so that he can hold on to power.
Everything that has been done by Jokowi and the people around him underlines the failure of the thesis of the ‘good person’—as Jokowi was known in the 2014 election—in carrying out a democratic mandate. In the hands of a leader that has ‘failed to be good’, it seems that the 2024 election will be the worst in the history of the Reformasi era.
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