JP/18/PILKD2
JP/18/PILKD2
The blazing war for attention
Perfectly aware that people have very short attention spans,
Denpasar politicians exploited every available means of
communication to ensure they had the people's undivided
attention during the recently concluded election campaign.
This led to spectacles such as two young and sexy dangdut
singers, Rema Ashari and Rina Iswara, up on stage dancing and
crooning to an appreciative crowd of men, stopping occasionally
to remind them to vote for Widiada and his running mate Suma
Widana in the Denpasar mayoral election on June 24.
"Remember to vote for Widiada-Suma Widana in the election.
They are good, honest and, most importantly, deadly handsome,"
Rema purred.
The audience went mad, dancing wildly around the girls and
screaming their wholehearted support for the candidates.
Nobody paid attention to some small details, such as that both
Rema and Rina were residents of Banyuwangi, East Java, and were
not registered voters in Denpasar.
More importantly, honestly speaking, they were not supporters
of Widiada and Suma Widana, or any other candidates for that
matter.
They were just attractive dangdut singers, a tool to capture
voters' attention.
"Using dangdut singers is a proven method for attracting
crowds of people. That is why they have become an integral part
of every major political gathering in the country," political
analyst Bhaskara said.
Dangdut singers were just one of a large number of tools
exploited by candidates to garner public support.
Every candidate had his or her own PR team, often including
journalists and photographers from various local media outlets.
These teams manufactured and manicured the candidates' images
through a well-detailed media strategy and prolonged media
exposure.
Fearing the involvement of their journalists and photographers
with candidates' campaign teams could compromise their
neutrality, several local newspapers imposed a strict policy on
campaign reporting, which included treating all campaign news as
advertorials, ranging in price from Rp 1 million to Rp 2.5
million for a 500-word article.
"This scheme ensures that the money goes to the company and
not to the journalists. By doing so, we hope that no candidate
will receive favorable, biased treatment due to his 'friendship'
with influential journalists. In short, we will print news on any
candidate provided he can pay for it," a media executive said.
History will judge whether this policy helped protect the
integrity of the media.
One thing, however, is already certain; the policy sparked a
fierce competition among candidates and newspaper were
transformed into virtual campaign leaflets.
"Newspapers became a dull, boring medium. The content of the
campaign coverage cast a similarly positive light on all of the
candidates because they paid for it," one disgruntled reader
said.
A fierce competition was also waged over the airwaves of TV
and radio stations. The big winner was definitely BaliTV, the
most popular television station on the island and the media of
choice for candidates.
"Puspayoga spent about Rp 75 million for television ads while
Widiada spent nearly Rp 60 million. In addition, the candidates
for Badung regent poured nearly Rp 1 billion into the station for
ads," a source said.
This is an outrageous sum of money, particularly since the ads
were generally of poor quality, both visually and contentwise.
Interestingly, all this money and effort seems to have done
little to sway the majority of registered voters in Denpasar.
"I could not even tell one candidate's ads from another. They
all looked the same to me," one registered voter said.