Expert Urges Prabowo to Act Against Paid Protest Masterminds to Safeguard Democracy

Political communication analyst from Esa Unggul University, M. Jamiluddin Ritonga, has urged President Prabowo Subianto not to stop at merely acknowledging he knows the parties funding paid demonstrations. He argued that the actors behind the financing of these protests must be processed legally because they are damaging the quality of democracy and misleading the formation of public opinion. Jamiluddin assessed that President Prabowo’s statement claiming he knows the masterminds who pay demonstrators further strengthens the suspicion that the practice of paid demonstrations is indeed occurring. “The president’s information certainly reinforces the long-held suspicion of paid demonstrations. If it is paid, there is certainly a mastermind behind it who provides the financing,” Jamiluddin said in his statement on Friday (26/6). According to him, demonstrations mobilised with monetary rewards differ from genuine expressions of public aspiration born purely from the community’s interests. In the practice of paid demonstrations, the participants are said to merely carry out the interests of certain parties who provide the funding. “Paid demonstrations certainly damage democracy. This is because they are not demonstrating to convey and fight for their own aspirations, but to convey the aspirations of the people or masterminds who pay them,” he said. He stated that the paid demonstrators ultimately become mere tools to build public opinion according to the interests of the parties funding the action. In fact, they are often asked to attack specific individuals or institutions to achieve the mastermind’s goals. Consequently, Jamiluddin continued, the public opinion that is formed no longer reflects the true aspirations of the people. This condition has the potential to influence the direction of government policy. “Fake public opinion will certainly affect the policies taken by the government. As a result, the policies taken by the government do not address the demonstrators’ issues, but instead realise the aspirations of the mastermind,” he said. According to Jamiluddin, policies born from inauthentic public opinion risk missing the target and reducing the effectiveness of solving problems in society. Therefore, he believes the actors who fund paid demonstrations must be dealt with firmly. He considers this action important to safeguard a democracy that relies on the people’s aspirations, not the interests of certain groups. “Because the impact is very large on democratic life, it is only proper that the masterminds of the demonstrators are acted against. They have damaged and torn apart public opinion,” he said. Jamiluddin stressed that in a democratic system, the government should apply a bottom-up approach, namely formulating policies based on genuine aspirations developing within society. “Those aspirations are not fabrications from masterminds echoed through paid demonstrators,” he stated. He therefore hopes that President Prabowo will not only possess information regarding the parties funding the protest actions, but will also take legal steps against the perpetrators. “So, it is perhaps not enough for President Prabowo to just know the masterminds who pay the demonstrators,” he concluded.