CIVIC ENGAGEMENT IN A FIGHT AGAINST MONEY POLITICS: A STUDY OF ANTI-MONEY POLITICS VILLAGE IN CANDIBINANGUN, PAKEM SUB-DISTRICT, SLEMAN
Abstract
Since the enactment of the Open Proportional System in the 2009 legislative elections, the trend of money politics in Indonesia has always risen and reached its peak in the 2014 general elections, where money politics targeted 33% of the total voters or around 62 million people. The practice of money politics in the upcoming 2019 Election has been predicted by many experts to increase due to the open proportional system that is still in force, the law that is not strong enough and also the fact that this upcoming 2019 elections is a simultaneous election where both media and community are more likely to be focused towards the presidential elections than legislative elections. The Bawaslu DIY initiated an Anti-Money Politics Village program to engage village communities in overseeing the practice of money politics. Candibinangun village is one of these villages aforementioned that served as a pilot of this program. Using Qualitative Research, the researcher focused on history and the driving factor of Candibinangun Village’s willingness to become a pilot project. On the other hand, the researcher also focused on the civic engagement of village communities in this movement. The research findings on history and the driving factors of this movement in the village of Candibinangun include: 1. very strong polarization in the 2014 elections that the villagers hope to be eliminated, 2. community aspirations that were not accommodated by elected candidates from previous elections, 3. to give the village community a political education on election. Basically, the community is ready to actively participate and they tend to be aware of the dangers of money politics. However, there are several obstacles and weaknesses of this movement, which include: 1. funding, 2. the absence of a clear system related to safety guarantees for reporters, 3. no involvement of NGOs or civil society which lead to ineffectiveness and limitedness of the socialization to the community as a whole. 4. The neutrality of village’s coordinator.