Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Michelle Ann Miller, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

Indonesia’s next simultaneous regional elections (pilkada serentak) in June 2018 will be an important political event, not only for the trajectory of regional politics across the archipelago, but also as a showcase of political preferences’ patterns outside Jakarta, especially with an eye towards the 2019 presidential election. Observers have therefore begun speculating on who would run as gubernatorial candidates in major provinces among the 171 participating regions.

More important than the candidates and their endorsing parties, however, are their campaign strategies. Some observers are already wary of the possibility of the mobilization of sectarian sentiments, especially in the aftermath of the rancorous Jakarta gubernatorial election this year, while some are concerned with the ever-present electoral corruption.

The presentation will contemplate on the strategies that will likely be used in North Sumatra, West Java and West Kalimantan. Gubernatorial elections in these provinces will likely be the ones most hotly contested due to several political aspects. First, the homogenously Muslim West Java has the highest number of voters of all provinces. This makes the province’s election a test-case for political parties’ popularity across the regions. Its homogeneity, however, does not mean that identity-politics would not be mobilized, as West Java has been known as the country’s most religiously intolerant province.

Second, although both North Sumatra and West Kalimantan are heterogeneous in terms of religions and ethnicities, past elections show different campaign strategies. While North Sumatra has Muslim as majority and Christian as minority, the campaigns have not relied much on identity-politics. Instead, electoral corruption and money-politics have been rampant. West Kalimantan’s past elections, on the other hand, has showcased the competition between Dayak (Christian) and Malay (Muslim) and the preference given to “sons of the soil” to be local leaders.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Deasy Simandjuntak is a political anthropologist and Visiting Fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. Her main research interests are patronage democracy, identity politics and local politics in Indonesia. She completed her PhD in 2010 at the University of Amsterdam, with a dissertation on “Patronage Democracy in Indonesia”, with North Sumatra as case study. She was a post-doctoral fellow at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) Leiden and Van Vollenhoven Institute at University of Leiden in 2009-2014 and guest fellow at Freiburg University in 2011. She was a lecturer at International Relations Department of University of Indonesia in 2006.

Some of her important publications are “Gifts and Promises: Patronage Democracy in a Decentralized Indonesia” in European Journal of East Asian Studies 2012, and “Milk-Coffee at 10 AM: Encountering the State through Pilkada in North Sumatra” in Van Klinken and Barker (eds) State of Authority: The State in Society in Indonesia, New York: Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publication, 2009. Her most recent publication is “Doing Anthropological Fieldwork with Southeast Asian Characteristics? Identity and Adaptation in the Field” (with Michaela Haug), in Huotari, Rüland, Schlehe (eds) Methodology and Research Practice in Southeast Asian Studies, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

REGISTRATION

Admission is free. We would greatly appreciate if you click on the “Register” button above to RSVP.