Democracy, Gen X Cynicism and the Price of Doing Business

By Stanley Widianto

Politicians get bad press for their actions, yet we also need to take responsibility for choosing our leaders. Even if we choose badly. Political optimism is a long shot in a climate of corruption and impunity, however we can change that by becoming informed voters able to direct our support to the right leaders. We do however, have a lot of distractions from this task, for example, poverty, civil unrest or rampant corruption, which can mean elections often only serve as a changing of the guards; something onerous we do every five years.

Writers, critics, and political analysts will argue about the merits of an election, and they’ll argue that candidacy doesn’t necessarily create a leader, that people choose not to vote because of the government’s failure to make direct, or any progress in the everyday lives of millions of people. Are we disillusioned because of this? Are we cynical about democracy’s limits?

In a general sense, platitudes about our flailing democratic system don’t stem from a lack of democratic actions, but from our understanding of how to institute democracy through robust political debate and critical voters. We think that all one needs to do is register their name and follow the prompts. You go to a voting booth, see the candidates, remember the things you think the candidates may have done in the past, think about your parents’ opinions that probably also shaped your own, consider it for about, say, three seconds and then mark the ballot. We are not actually considering what our votes mean. For a country used to deconstructing everything there is to know about Pancasila, and for a country more likely to pick up a civics textbook than a newspaper; a lack of genuine engagement has become ingrained.

There are two significant problems, one is how concerted efforts to raise awareness among first time voters throughout the archipelago might be missing the point. And two is that ‘generation x’ very much play fast and loose with ‘being righteous’ so much so that we’ve given up on common sense reality. I’m sure those who have the final say about our mentality have been first voters once, so we can do without jaded attitudes that point the finger at the younger generations’ cynicism. Politicians are adept at deeming abstention an inexorable sin but they stop short of explaining why it’s still persistent- because they don’t actually care to address voter apathy.

Admittedly there are NGOs, for example, Jari Ungu, the Center for Election and Political Party (CEPP) or Ayo Vote, who out of noble reasons are trying to show young voters across the nation how democracy works. This is a great place to start, but the purpose of these organisations are competing with other unhelpful political rhetoric. For example, the KPU’s statement that demonizes non-voters in this year’s general elections is not only baseless, but morally corrupt coming from the same organisation who refuses to help out the aforementioned NGOs in building public trust; a job, among others, which I personally think belongs to the politicians.

To make matters worse there are some politicians who are trying to provoke participants by claiming that it’s still within our constitutional rights to, in fact, not vote. Rather than cynicism being the cause of a lack of voter participation, it is a lack of good arguments for getting engaged with democratic processes that presents an ongoing problem among young voters. For a slew of first time voters, voting is as dull as paying a speeding ticket. We are nonchalant. Our trust as citizens has been undermined by the trivialization of democratic processes.

Democracy isn’t a long shot if we know how to make it work. For starters, the government could own up to its mistakes. We could hold a nationally televised debate among candidates that targets misconceptions about the importance of exercising the right to vote. We need to become informed voters. Read the newspaper, recognise bias and distortion, and be critical, not cynical.

Our current perceptions towards democratic processes are not constructive, because these days, our participation in building our nation ends after we leave a voting booth. We need to realise that we’re actually complicit in the crimes of our politicians because we are the ones who vote them in. As one of the lynchpins in this ‘system we agreed on’, we millennials haven’t yet got our hands dirty in all this, but we could start by putting some gloves on and getting involved.

Stanley is a student at Universitas Katolik Parahyangan.