The first Indonesian general election is just days away. The contestation between candidates and sympathizers is getting, sparking various issues on the election organizers.
There are those who believe (legitimize), but there are also those who do not believe (delegitimize) the organizers of the 2019 election. The Department of Politics and Government (DPP) UGM conducts big data analysis through the Big Data Analytics Laboratory on issues related to trust (legitimacy) and distrust (delegitimation) of the 2019 election, especially the General Election Commission (KPU). The data were obtained through conversations on Twitter and 270 online media over a period of 10 days between 22 March and 1 April 2019.
The data from the analysis of conversations on Twitter recorded 6,945 conversations about trust or legitimacy as well as distrust or delegitimation of the 2019 election. From this data, 4,405 conversations showed distrust of the KPU, while 2,540 conversations indicated legitimization of the 2019 election.
“There were conversations that delegitimized the KPU, systematically shared on Twitter, and many of these accounts turned off their location settings,” said Sigit Pamungkas, S.IP., MA, on Thursday (4/4) when delivering analytical data related to the legitimacy and delegitimization of the 2019 election with the theme of “Map of the Threat against the 2019 Election Legitimacy”.
Sigit said that geographically, from 1,705 conversations recorded conversations related to the delegitimation issue of the 2019 election were mostly concentrated in West Java (465) and DKI Jakarta (352). Meanwhile, both qualitatively and quantitatively through word-cloud analysis and tracing of related accounts, it was found that the neutrality of the organizers became a crucial issue for both groups legitimizing and delegitimizing the 2019 elections.
“In the past, public distrust of election organizers was natural, there was no acceleration or fabrication processes to say that KPU was taking sides or cheating. Now, there is this kind of fabrication and production process in such a way that it sticks in the minds of voters (public) that KPU is cheating, even though it’s not true,” he said.
Sigit emphasized that there were efforts to keep delegitimizing, both by demonstrating and campaigning for fraud. According to him, this will harm whomever wins the election and endanger the democratic order.
“Even so, everything can be neutralized by civil society that displays the election data as it is because the end of the contestation is the election result, the election result is the ‘crown’ of the election. There should be a civil society that displays the election data in a way that all parties can see it, thus reducing the tendency of accelerated delegitimation,” he said.
Source: https://ugm.ac.id/id/berita/17806-upaya-delegitimasi-pemilu-merugikan
