JAKARTA – Political communication expert at Pelita Harapan University, Emrus Sihombing, said that identity politics still has the potential to participate in the 2024 simultaneous General Elections (Pemilu). This is because many politicians in Indonesia are still hungry for power.
“Politicians are still based on pragmatic politics, not based on ideology. Our ideology is Pancasila, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika,” Emrus said in the To The Point dialogue program on RRI radio with the theme “Preventing Identity Politics”, Thursday (17/2/2023).
According to Emrus, based on the facts that occurred in previous general elections, such as the DKI Jakarta Regional Head Election (Pilkada) and the last Presidential Election (Pilpres), identity politics was not submitted by regional head candidate pairs (paslon), presidential candidate, or political parties. . But what echoes identity politics is a group of people to give support to political forces or candidate pairs.
He continued, it was very unfortunate when candidate pairs who benefited from identity politics did not refuse. Even let.
“That’s where it becomes a problem because it benefits him. They should have said that if identity politics is not in accordance with Pancasila, it should be rejected,” he said.
Emrus said, when viewed from the semiotics of identity politics, it benefits certain candidates and harms other candidates. He gave an example of heaven’s politics, such as if you don’t choose this, you won’t be washed when you die.
“Even if you die, whose fault is it if you don’t wash it? not the dead, but the living who do not wash. So I think identity politics is still emerging, I call it ‘heaven’ politics.
Emrus advised potential candidates in the 2024 simultaneous elections to put aside identity politics. More precisely, do not appear again narrow identity politics.
Emrus explained that narrow identity politics exploits identity so that his group or himself is more exclusive, more righteous than others.
Member of the Election Supervisory Body (Bawaslu) Loly Suhenty stated that there is no definition of identity politics in the Election Law or Regional Head Elections. According to him, identity politics is more to the discourse that develops where when people are associated with elections, someone chooses based on the closeness of his identity politics. For example, both are Muslim, both are non Muslim, both are Sundanese.
“In the context of identity politics, there are those who interpret it, it’s not wrong, identity politics can be used in the political process. For Bawaslu, what needs to be underlined is that if you look at article 280 of the Election Law, or article 69 of the Law on Regional Head Elections, in fact it is not permissible when someone insults, incites, pits against, or suggests committing violence. So in today’s context, when talking about identity politics, the politicization of identity is not allowed, because usually it is charged with pitting one against the other,” he said. []
