Money Politics Around Us

Indonesian people had taken part in legislature election yesterday. Regardless of many critics of people toward some aspect of the election, including the preparation of the election, controversy about fixed list of voters, questionable capacity of the candidates of legislature, abstentions (non-voters), etc., we can say that the election had held successfully.

But I was very sorry that I cannot attend at the election booth when the ballot has been counted. I cannot look closer at the counting process because I had another job yesterday. I cycled around Annuqayah, and I had not enough time to pay close attention to the counting.

Last night, in the midst of my business, I had a little talk about the result of the election in some local voting booth with some colleagues. They are moslem students (santri) in this pesantren. They told me some valuable information about the result and something connected with the election yesterday.

They gave emphasis on the contested local candidates, especially the members of big family of Annuqayah. They mentioned numbers. From this starting point, they notified me such a bad news about the students. They reported about “the dawn attack”, a term for the practice of money politics just before the election.

To be honest, this dawn attack actually is not a new method to get supports and obtain votes. But I really shocked to hear that because the students, that is santri, who had learned and absorbed religious values in pesantren, fell into the temptation of the money politics. In fact, they not only had injected by a set of religious values. They also had learned civic education in their formal education. They are without doubt well-educated persons.

But the religious values and their complicated concept about democracy has no meaning in front of the dawn attack. I really amazed to know that something knocked them down were a pack of cigarette, instant noodles, a ten thousand rupiah, or even “wrapped rice”. They are the price of their votes.

When my colleagues told me about the money politics around this religious educational institution, a such radical conclusion arose on my mind: that our moral-religious education and civic education had failed. I know that this is an inconvenient conclusion. Moreover, for the candidates who still have honesty and sincerity, and they lose in this election by way of the dawn attack, this is really a bitter truth. But of course this will remind us that the struggle to civilize our society requires more energy and better strategy.