Yogyakarta, March 10th 2023─Entering the political year, educational institutions play a crucial role in the successful implementation and supervision of healthy and inclusive elections. This topic is one of the main topics on the agenda of the Deans of Social Sciences of Indonesian State University Forum (FORDEKIIS) on Friday (10/3) at the Auditorium of FISIPOL UGM. FORDEKIIS invited the Commissioner of the General Election Supervisory Agency (Badan Pengawas Pemilu/Bawaslu), Lolly Suhenty, to start a discussion entitled “Encouraging Programmatic & Integrity Elections”.
Lolly said that currently, Bawaslu is facing various challenges, ranging from the neutrality of organizers and holding elections to the potential for polarization in society. She also said that actually Bawaslu is still very limited so that collaboration and participatory supervision are needed from elements of the community and universities. “Bawaslu is very limited, but if we can collaborate then we will be able to overcome these limitations,” said Lolly.
Dean of Faculty of Social and Political Sciences of Semarang State University, Dr. Moh. Solehatul Mustofa questioned Bawaslu’s response to threats to national unity in the era of social media. According to Mustafa, it seems that Bawaslu is still weak in monitoring the flow of information on social media.
Responding to Mustofa’s question, Lolly explained that Bawaslu had made several breakthroughs to overcome problems such as the rise of hoaxes on social media. “It turns out that the problem is because the community standards for each media platform are different and it doesn’t find common ground with Bawaslu. So today we sat down together, for example with TikTok, now it’s the final stage of equalizing community standards. We also invite them to open law (number) 7 so that their community standards adapt to the Indonesian context,” she explained.
The discussion continued with the narrative of a number of deans regarding the experiences of electoral political education in their respective campuses. One of them is the Dean of Tanjungpura University, Dr. Herlan said that so far his campus has involved students in election monitoring through the Merdeka Learning-Independence Campus (MBKM) program. Through MBKM, he targets 1,000 students to become North Sumatra Bawaslu partners.
In line with Herlan, lecturer of the Department of Politics and Government UGM, Dr. Abdul Gaffar Karim said that it was important to bring universities closer to Bawaslu and the General Elections Commission (Komisi Pemilihan Umum/KPU). He agreed that the MBKM and Community Service Program (Kuliah Kerja Nyata/KKN) programs could be a great opportunity to make students not only voters but also participatory democratic actors.
At the end of the event, FORDEKIIS is expected to become a strategic partner who actively collaborates with Bawaslu. In one of her presentations, Lolly Suhenti also positively welcomed the possibility of this collaboration.