By : Ananda Prameswari )*
Elections must be prepared so that there is no fraud in the process. Peace must also be maintained because the campaign period for the presidential candidates (candidates for president) can escalate emotions and make the situation escalate. During elections, it is mandatory to eradicate hoaxes and propaganda so that there is no blackmail campaigns and chaos in cyberspace.
Election is a grand event that is held every 5 years and the people are waiting for it with enthusiasm, because they want to get a new leader candidate. Since the reform era, Indonesian citizens have been freed to choose their own presidential candidate, not the way they used to vote for parties and candidates. Elections are thrilling events because the results can be beyond predictions.
The community plays a major role in creating peaceful elections and supports the government, KPU and all other parties. Peace must be maintained so that elections can take place smoothly without riots or even bloodshed. Therefore peace must be maintained by eradicating hoaxes and propaganda that can mislead and warm people’s hearts, because they are deceived by provocateurs who produce fake news.
Acting Mayor of Yogyakarta Sumadi asked all citizens of the City of Yogyakarta to cooperate in creating a peaceful 2024 election. This was conveyed during the ‘ Jagongan ‘ event with the Yogyakarta City Political and National Unity Agency ( Bakesbangpol ), Thursday 22 December 2022 at the Burza Hotel Yogyakarta.
Sumadi continued, he hopes that the holding of the 2024 elections will not be colored by religious politics, SARA and money politics. The government is trying to create safe and comfortable conditions when holding the 2024 elections. Democratic parties will avoid money politics, hoax information , and voter participation as desired.
In a sense, ahead of the General Election, people must create peace by avoiding hoaxes . The reason is because the influence of hoaxes is very large and can mislead people’s minds, especially those who are still lay people. If there is an election hoax , it will be very detrimental and make the central government and regional governments dizzy, because the public will make false accusations.
The hoax about the election that has been circulating for several months is the issue of a 3-term president. This was strongly denied by President Jokowi because he did not want to be re-elected. The public needs to be aware that this hoax is very misleading and the government continues to enforce the rule that a president can only be elected a maximum of 2 times.
Then there are also election hoaxes which are very serious because they bring up the issue of SARA (ethnicity, religion, race and inter-group). Legislative candidates and presidential candidates seem to be ‘fighting’ based on SARA and this is annoying, because they have never issued a statement relating to SARA.
Don’t let the election become an arena for fighting one against the other because of the spread of hoaxes . Therefore, the people need to declare peaceful elections and help the KPU (General Election Commission) and the government to ignore hoaxes and prevent their spread.
To maintain election peace and prevent hoaxes , literacy is needed , especially on social media. If there are friends who sharenews, it is mandatory to check the truth first. Don’t let it spread before you find out if it ‘s just a hoax .
The public needs to understand the characteristics of hoax news circulating on social media and WA groups. First, using bombastic titles or even click – bait to attract viewers , even though the contents are only ‘junk’ news. Second, the news is just a twist or a statement by a political figure that is ‘fried’, meaning that he talks about A but is made to appear as if he is talking about B and vice versa.
Hoax and propaganda news are usually given an introduction in the form of the words “watch out, it’s urgent , please spread it”, or something like that. People are asked to be smarter in sorting information in cyberspace. The goal is that they are not trapped in hoaxes and that the 2024 elections will take place peacefully.
Meanwhile, Henri Subiakto , the expert staff of the Minister of Communication and Informatics stated that the Government seems to be quite bothered by the appearance of hoaxes that seem to be non-stop. The Ministry of Communication and Informatics even formed a special task force, named Drone 9 to monitor content on the Internet, including hoaxes .
Henri continued, this task force had collected more than 700 contents identified as hoaxes . Such content, both text and photos, is given a special tag by Kominfo and announced as a hoax so that it will no longer be disseminated to the public.
In a sense, the government wants to realize peaceful elections by forming a special task force to eradicate hoaxes . However, the public was also asked to help the performance of the task force by stopping spreading hoaxes and paying more attention to news that had spread from 1 WA group to another. Don’t let hoaxes spread and cause the election to become chaotic.
The government wants to create peaceful and hoax-free elections . Propaganda and hoax news must be eradicated so that there is no fake news that misleads the public and has the potential to disrupt elections. The general election must be a success and all Indonesian citizens are expected to take part in maintaining a hoax-free peaceful election .
)* The author is a Media Room Contributor