Starting Tuesday: Half-cocked campaign, half-baked candidates

Endy M. Bayuni, Chief Editor, The Jakarta Post

The presidential "dialog" planned for the two candidates this week is proving something of an anticlimax to the entire electoral process: It is the only canvassing activity the two candidates -- the incumbent President, Megawati Soekarnoputri, and former chief security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono -- will be engaging in during the designated three-day campaign period that starts on Tuesday.

By regulation, they cannot campaign otherwise before Monday's election runoff. Obviously, their teams will be campaigning covertly right to the end, but the series of dialogs in the next three days, which will be televised live nationwide, are the only occasions the candidates will appear face to face with their constituents before election day.

The General Elections Commission (KPU) has imposed many campaign restrictions, chiefly with a view to ensure an orderly and peaceful election year. However, the April election for House of Representatives legislators and the July presidential election indicate that the KPU may have been overly cautious.

Both proceeded smoothly and with few reports of violence, not necessarily because of the restrictions, but more likely because there was no reason to fear such violence in the first place.

The KPU actually could have given some leeway to make the run- up to next week's election more vibrant and thus allow voters a closer glimpse at the two candidates -- or conversely, allow the candidates to reach out to voters one last time.

At this crucial stage, the KPU should be promoting more political communication between the candidates and voters; instead, it chose to limit such contact in two distinct ways.

First, it ignored appeals from various quarters to relax restrictions to accommodate campaigning outside the designated three-day period.

Second, rather than a public debate between the two candidates, the KPU opted for a "dialog" in which the candidates will appear separately before a panel to address questions they have already vetted. Furthermore, each candidate will appear before their select supporters.

Such a carefully choreographed event reduces the value of a dialog to a mere photo-op and an occasion for the candidates to feel good about themselves.

There is also a nagging feeling that this kind of dialog would be farcical, as it dumbs down the benefits of the event for candidates -- and for voters, too -- in terms of political communication and education.

The KPU's highly cautious approach to the final round of the election thus comes at the expense of the quality of this election and of our democracy.

This is unfortunate in light of the unprecedented direct presidential election -- in the past, the appointment of a president was the responsibility of the People's Consultative Assembly -- and this spirit of promoting a greater connection between the nation's president and its people is not reflected in the campaign regulations, which seem to support the exact opposite.

A campaign period is the best -- though not the only -- opportunity for voters to assess and scrutinize candidates thoroughly.

A well organized and thoroughly prepared presidential debate would provide an occasion to get to know the candidates better, as they would be tested on their policies and political programs, and their stance on many issues of importance. Their personalities -- a vital factor for many voters in making their choice -- would also be exposed.

In addition, for many voters, it is not so much what the candidates say in the debate, but rather, how they say it.

In this day and age of television, appearance and delivery count for much, and aspiring candidates must be able to handle themselves well on any occasion, at any place and at all times. A political debate is therefore the litmus test for any presidential hopeful, and any candidate who shies away from such a stage is simply not up to the job.

It is thus incomprehensible why the KPU succumbed easily to the Megawati camp's request for a "dialog" instead of a face-off between the two candidates.

The debate ahead of the July election may have been a farce, but it was the first one ever held in the country. If some found it rather comical, that was because most candidates were not prepared adequately.

For the two runoff candidates to not engage in a final debate now is regrettable: We are letting them off too easily for a job as important as the president of the republic of the unitary state of Indonesia. A prospective CEO in any respected company would certainly go through far more rigorous assessments before they get the job.

With less than a week before the people cast their ballots and elect their president, the majority of voters probably know too little about the candidates to make an informed decision. It is the old "buying a cat in the sack" phenomenon -- yet again -- that we seem to get at every election.

Most of us simply do not have any idea what we will be getting the country into when we cast our votes on Monday.

The half-cocked campaign would, at best, provide half-baked candidates from which the people must make their choice.

With such an electoral process, this country would most likely be subject, once again, to a mediocre president for the next five years, in spite of the direct and more democratic nature of this historic election.