Parties under fire for recruiting actors, actresses

Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Analysts criticized political parties on Wednesday for their lack of commitment to quality elections, as reflected in the nomination of several actors as legislative candidates.

Smita Notosusanto from the Center for Electoral Reform (Cetro) said nominating celebrities as legislative candidates was a poor start for a country trying to develop a democracy through fair and transparent elections.

"The upcoming election will be no different from previous elections, when people never knew who represented them in the legislative bodies," Smita said.

Major parties including the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan), the National Awakening Party (PKB) and the Golkar Party announced recently that they were recruiting soap opera actors to run as legislative candidates.

PDI Perjuangan has tapped actors Desy Ratnasari, Marissa Haque and Deddy Sutomo, as well as singer Franky Sahilatua, and is said to have approached another actor, Sophia Latjuba.

The PKB, which is affiliated with the country's largest Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), has listed actors Rieke Dyah Pitaloka and Ayu Azhari as candidates, while the Golkar Party has enlisted Nurul Arifin.

Riswanda Imawan from Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta criticized political parties for their failure to change their mind-set and continuing to regard general elections as "political entertainment" rather than a forum to promote programs aimed at serving public interests.

"I'm not underestimating the actors and actresses, but couldn't these parties offer a dialog with voters about their platforms instead of exploiting attractive people?" Riswanda asked.

He suggested that activists concerned with gender issues protest the exploitation of women by political parties to garner votes.

Smita said the House of Representatives should share the blame for the flawed recruitment process of legislative candidates, which gives the central boards of parties a dominant role.

"During deliberation of the election bill at the House we repeatedly asked legislators to introduce articles to govern the appointment of legislative candidates, especially the selection itself and standard requirements (to be met by candidates).

"But legislators rejected the idea because they don't want to lose their privileges. Now we only see 'questionable people' representing us at the House," Smita said.

She said the public should be allowed to supervise the process of selecting legislative candidates to examine whether money politics and nepotism were involved.

Some parties are reportedly demanding that potential legislative candidates pay as much as Rp 400 million (US$47,000) for their nominations.