Campaign: Selling ideas in entertaining manner

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): Ulil Abshar-Abdallah, a promising young Muslim intellectual, wrote a very beautiful essay discussing the difference between campaigning and preaching that was published in Kompas daily on May 21, 1999.

Campaigning, Ulil wrote, is essentially about selling ideas, programs and plans. The principles of marketing should, therefore, be closely observed in every political campaign. One principle in marketing is that consumers are king. Consumer satisfaction is the ultimate objective of marketing. If political campaigning is to be conducted like a marketing campaign, it means that in the end, the audience, the potential buyers of ideas and programs, should be made king and that their satisfaction should be made the primary goal of the campaign.

In the hands of party fanatics, however, campaigning degenerates into preaching. In such cases, the campaigner acts like a preacher, and he or she makes himself or herself the center of the whole event. The campaigner becomes the king, and the audience becomes merely a group of ignorant laymen who have to be made aware of what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong, using, if need be, threats of hell and promises of heaven.

As a novice in political campaigning, I found Ulil's analysis a real treasure. When I left for a kecamatan (subdistrict) town in Central Java to campaign for my party, I put the essence of this article firmly in my mind. I was determined to act as a salesman, and not as a preacher.

I was nervous because I realized that I did not have the slightest knowledge and skill for political campaigning. I had, indeed, previous experience in political campaigning, but that was in 1982 and 1987, when the political situation in the country was entirely different.

Campaigning in those years was very easy. You just went to the city or town of your designation and everything was already put in place. The audience was already prepared, packed in a large auditorium or square, and you just mumble the prescribed theme. No one would ever come with a bad or nasty question or remark.

The difficulty of campaigning in those years lay in your heart, in your conscience, not in your brain. The problem was finding a way of telling those big lies in such a way that the audience clearly understood that you did not believe those lies yourself, and that you did not expect them to believe those lies either. The art was to make them feel that the whole thing was an exercise in compulsory political clowning.

This time, the game is different. Campaigning in this age of political reform is not an easy matter. I knew it from the very beginning, and I immediately felt it upon my arrival in the small town. I was to stay at the house of one party sympathizer, not at a hotel. The night before the big event, I had an informal meeting with local party people. They stayed until late in the night, trying to give me all sorts of advice. They told me that the town was a community of ardent Moslems, and that it was very important to couch my message in Islamic idioms.

This is a big problem, I said to myself. I have never been involved in a serious political discourse using Islamic idioms. Whenever I have to resort to an Islamic idiom it had always been in a religious discourse, not a political one. If I follow the advice of these people, I will for sure sound like a preacher, I thought to myself. I decided not to follow the advice. I did not want to sound phony. I would be my own self. If by using my own language I would not be able to connect to my audience, then it was just too bad.

When the following day I went to the square where the campaign was to take place, I was overwhelmed by the warm welcome extended to me by the crowd. Every person there seemed to want to touch my hand, making me feel that I was really an important person. One local ulama came to me and kissed my hand. I felt very embarrassed and guilty at the same time. I felt I did not deserve the honor.

The square was overflowing with people, mostly young, ranging from 15 years to 30 years old. There was a dangdut orchestra, a Malay-Indian music band playing popular songs, accompanying local artists -- three young women singing and dancing. This must be one of the reasons why the place was flooded with people.

When I climbed to the podium and looked down at the audience, I realized that I was the wrong person trying to do the wrong thing at the wrong time and at the wrong place. I realized immediately that I would have to translate my prepared speech into another kind of Indonesian language. It must be expressed in a language that can be understood by these people. My audience seemed to me to be a collection of fishermen, laborers, small farmers and the like.

I looked into my notes prepared in the morning before coming to this square and found words and expressions which could not possibly be understood by these people. Expressions like "restoring the nation, be vigilant but not suspicious, embarking upon a second nation-building" would be meaningless in this community. I decided to throw away all the notes I had prepared. I decided to play it by ear.

The music was playing and the crowd was dancing happily. Finally the formal part of the meeting was announced. It started with a recital from the Koran, chanted in Arabic without translation. At the end of every verse, the audience responded with a solemn Allah, chanted in a tone that was in harmony with the melody used by the Koran reader.

Then came the opening speech, delivered by the chairman of the organizing committee of this campaign. He started with a thunderous merdeka (freedom) cry. The crowd showed signs of restlessness. It was past 1 p.m. Standing down there in the full glare of the sun must be very uncomfortable. It was very obvious that most did not pay attention to the speech. The 10-minute opening speech went by. The crowd gave a generous applause, thanking the speaker for not talking too long, I think.

Then came the speech by the local party boss. I think he knew that the crowd was not interested in speeches. He tried to establish rapport by asking the public to join him in singing a very popular song, Burung Kakatua (Cockatoo Bird), reworded to suit the purpose of the party campaign. The crowd became a little calmer. Then he started to deliver the party message. It was a simple "vote for us" message, with the necessary reasons and justifications. The crowd became restless again. Fifteen minutes went by, 15 long minutes which felt like 15 hours.

Then came my turn. As a cochairman of the party, and coming from the central executive council, I was accorded the honor of being the keynote speaker in this gathering. I was nervous. I still held the notes I had prepared in the morning but I could not see them clearly, especially the notes scribbled in Arabic prepared by one of my assistants. I tried to be calm, but the sound that came out of me lacked self-confidence. "This is not me," I said to myself. I decided to be brief, talk in my usual manner and suppressed all intentions to sound like a politician.

At that particular moment I recalled a remark made to me by a friend. "You are too much a scholar to be a convincing politician," this friend said to me. I thought at that moment that being a scholar was incompatible with being a politician. I still think so, and wonder what I really am at this moment. I am no longer a scholar, and not quite a politician yet. Would there ever be a space for scholarly politicians in this country? It was possible in the past, but what about the future?

While I was immersed in these thoughts, the music began to play again, and the three young starlets appeared on the podium. They sang and danced, and the public danced with them. When one of the three girls demonstrated her expertise in belly dancing, the public roared wildly. Everybody tried to be as close to the podium as possible to get a clear sight of the sensual movements performed by this young girl. Watching her facial expression while performing the dance, I got the idea that she was purposely teasing the crowd. It was as if she was saying, in body language, "Get me if you can".

Suddenly it dawned on me that on occasions like this what the crowd wants is entertainment. That's it! Campaigning is essentially selling ideas in an entertaining manner. Campaigning is marketing and entertaining at the same time. The message delivered by these young girls -- vote for our party -- while singing and belly dancing was very effective. All the speeches that preceded this entertainment, including my speech, were just pure nonsense, I think.

The writer is an observer of social and cultural affairs.