Awareness of the dangers of SARA issues if left unchecked and continues to spread widely in society, especially through social media, is a very dangerous thing and will actually have more negative impacts. Especially before elections like today, political contestation must continue to be monitored by all elements of the nation so that it can run healthily.
Chairman of the General Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) of East Java (Jatim) Province, A. Warits, said that it is appropriate for all parties, including security forces, to be able to provide inspiration to the public to realize peaceful elections.
All elements of society in the country should be able to join hands and abandon all their different regional attributes, as was done by the youth in the previous Youth Pledge momentum. So that with this, society can be further able to merge into one.
Not only that, but it is also important that there is neutrality carried out by the State Civil Apparatus (ASN) and also the security forces from joint personnel of the Indonesian National Army (TNI) and the Indonesian National Police (Polri) because every election participant must be equal and also able to contest in healthy ways.
Conflict can occur because of unfair distribution to different identities, it can also occur because of inequality and lack of justice. All of these things will clearly be able to trigger conflict in every implementation and process stage of the election later. Therefore, to be able to overcome this, it is necessary to achieve fair elections.
It would be very dangerous if, for example, the implementation of the democratic party and political contestation in the General Election event were still characterized by the politicization of ethnicity, religion, race and also class (SARA). If there is still the practice of clashing ethnic, religious, racial and inter-group differences which are actually inevitable in Indonesia, then in fact it is the same as this nation is still in the same phase as before the Youth Pledge was declared.
For this reason, all elements of the nation must be able to work together in order to realize elections that are much more peaceful in the interests of the nation itself in the future. The momentum of the commemoration of Youth Pledge Day itself, which fell on October 28, must also be used to invite millennials, who in fact are young men and women in Indonesia, to be able to ward off the emergence of fake news or hoaxes, especially before the democratic party is held.
Regarding this, the Chair of the North Sumatra Legal Journalists Forum (Forwakum Sumut), Aris Rinaldi Nasution, said that commemoration of the Youth Pledge Day itself is a very important momentum for the young generation to continue to make their achievements in all areas of life.
Many efforts can be carried out by young people if they really want to emulate and also celebrate the momentum of the Youth Pledge, they can even start from the smallest things first, such as by preventing hoax news or can also be done by not carelessly sharing information on social media if The validation is still unknown, if all this is done successfully, it will be part of the achievement in maintaining conduciveness in the social environment and in cyberspace.
Ahead of the implementation of the democratic party and political contestation in the upcoming General Election, reflecting on the previous political year, it turns out that Indonesia is still very vulnerable to the spread of fake news using SARA issues and many narratives that try to divide each other.
If, for example, the SARA issue and the many testimonies about provocative things continue to be echoed without any party making an effort to counter it, then it will clearly have a very dangerous impact on the 2024 elections and this dangerous impact will also come to fellow Indonesian people.
It would be best for young men and women to be able to participate actively in preventing all the bad impacts that might occur. Moreover, currently it cannot be denied that millennials themselves are the generation that can be said to understand the most about social media and can also influence each other on trends that occur in society, so that if the trends that spread are maintained there will be many positive things, then it will be able to prevent other people behave negatively.
The progress of political contestation must continue to be monitored by all elements of society so that it can continue in a healthy manner and is not at all colored by the practice of fighting against one another which is very capable of dividing the integrity of the nation. Therefore, vigilance is very important to continue to increase in order to prevent the dangers of SARA issues.
