The Role of Volunteers and Political Participation in the 2012 Jakarta Gubernatorial Election

Abstract

The changes that occurred in the Jakarta 2012 election may be seen as a change in Indonesia's social movements and election tradition. They marked a social movement with special characteristics; specifically, a ‘partisan’ movement, led by the successful Jokowi–Ahok ticket. The partisan social movement also changed the tradition of money politics, which has always coloured general and local elections in Indonesia. This paper found four main factors in Jokowi–Ahok's victory. The first was their reputations and track records of leadership and consistency, which, secondly, encouraged unpaid volunteers to motivate the public to participate in the election and vote for the pair. Thirdly, in contrast to previous social movements in Indonesia, the volunteers did not just work to overthrow the current leadership and replace it, and then distance themselves, but instead continued to monitor the candidates; some managed government directly, while others took watch dog position. Fourthly, the relationship between volunteers and local government was not necessarily oppositional. As such, they were partisan not only in that they were supporters of a pair of candidates, but also in their promotion and support of openness, anti-corruption efforts and provision of maximum public services.

Adversarial Linkages: The Urban Poor and Electoral Politics in Jakarta

“…Meanwhile, Ahok now had little support among activists. In the 2012 election, many civil society activists had rallied around Jokowi and Ahok, giving rise to a new mode of volunteer-based election campaigning (Suaedy 2014). By 2016, much of this support had evaporated.…”

Expression of Political Friends AhokVoluntarism in Elections Jakarta 2017

“…The experience of the 2014 presidential election implies a strong assumption that the function of volunteerism has moved away and enlarges. Symptoms such as these could be meant as a transformation of society into classes that are partisan Affinity Affiliate and against figures and interest groups (Suaedy 2014). Jokowi is a form of figure able to muster volunteer surge.…”

Volunteerism as an alternative early warning system in supporting election supervision

“…For example, they are actively involved in certain social environments (Lee & Brudney 2012). These internal and external factors are essentially inseparable, especially in the midst of current trends, where voluntary activity becomes part of activism in social and political movements (Eliasoph 2013, Suaedy 2014.…”

“…Volunteerism can serve as a means to renew the values of citizenship, able to sustain people's lives, which in turn can contribute to the realisation of collective capacity as a precondition for the work of democracy (Suaedy 2014). The concept of volunteerism used in this article refers to the collective desire to create systemic changes through established procedures, but with the realisation that it cannot be initiated by the dominant actors or institutions.…”

“…Volunteerism that ensouls public participation becomes a pillar of democratisation as a concept of participatory democracy (Ibrahim 2017). Therefore, the development of volunteerism in political dynamics in Indonesia today, including the holding of elections, is also an indication of the strengthening of citizen participation in the electoral political field (Suaedy 2014). This phenomenon is crucial to the growth of democracy in Indonesia because for more than three decades, the pattern of public participation in the elections has tended to be in the form of mobilisation to vote.…”