Exclusivity of Incumbent Candidate in the Pandemic of Covid-19 as a Political Resource towards Election 2020

Abstract

The corona case in Southeast Sulawesi requiring political movements of each candidate to have a special strategy that breaks social restrictions would be more beneficial for detainees. Exclusion of incumbent candidates is also intended to likely utilize the position of regional head amid the social situation affected by the Pandemic touching various aspects of people's lives including the political side. Amid pandemic situation engulfing along with the political situation, incumbent candidates who are also regional heads "should" prioritize the management of people affected by the plague rather than political interests. Based on research, several regional heads who will also go forward as incumbent candidates are actively and massively involved in attracting public sympathy through distributing basic aid including masks and various kinds of personal protective equipment leading the two regional heads to be suspected of doing violation by Bawaslu. The subjects and informants in this study were the Chairperson of the Southeast Sulawesi Province Bawaslu, the head of East Kolaka Bawaslu and the Konawe Islands, the Regional Head Candidate and the online media covering the news. Data Sources used consisted of: (a) Primary Data constituting the data source directly obtained by the researcher directly from the source of the study by conducting interviews with predetermined informants, and (b) Secondary Data, a data source that indirectly provides data to researchers.

The Metanarrative of Pandemic Politics: Indonesian Regional Head Elections Cases

“…However, the rational innovation lies in listening to the voices and opinions of the people where the government improvises to fight for the importance of people's political rights without ignoring the rights of public health. This political action is not a form of depoliticization or politicization of the pandemic as in previous literature [26][32] [33][34] [35] but it is an opportunity for positive possibilities to overcome uncertainty [51]. Not carrying out the local election will also face the government with uncertainty because the consequences cannot be predicted.…”

“…This democratic speculation is moving towards criticism, the government is slow because the focus is shifted to efforts to maintain power [23] and shortterm political articulation [1], as is the case in the Czech Republic and Slovakia [24]. Some scholars say that the government's actions contain dilemmas and paradoxes, such as the policy controversy between the regional elections and the handling of Covid-19, such as the antinomy of law and human rights [25], pandemic depoliticization [26], moderate actions and constitutional dilemmas as well as reducing the practice of leadership by interim officials in the regions [27][28] [29][30] [31] the number of abstentions is increasing -declining voter participation and Indonesia's global democracy index and prone to the politicization of the pandemic in various regions [32][33][34] [35]; Violation of health protocols in elections [36] [37]. Various other views also present offers against the possibility that the pandemic will continue, namely elections through representative democracy [38] and digitalization of politics through social media platforms [39] as well as electronic elections [40] [41] as studies in other countries [42] [43][44] [45].…”