A woman stands next to an anti-corruption campaign banner at the corruption court in Jakarta on July 1, 2009. Fighting graft is one of the biggest campaign issues of the presidential election. (Photo: Adek Berry, AFP)

Money Talks on The Campaign Trail for the Poor

For the adoring residents of one Jakarta slum, little incentive is needed to support popular incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s re-election bid. But a few thousand rupiahs are always welcome. As the country prepares for its second direct presidential election on Wednesday, every candidate has pledged to fight the country’s entrenched culture of corruption.

On the ground and among the masses of Indonesia’s 234 million people, it is an open secret that so-called money politics is a part of every campaign.

A short walk from Jakarta’s grand colonial-era presidential palace, 55-year-old widow Hamida is a link in the chain of patronage between the elite and the poor.

Stocky and with large white splotches of missing skin pigmentation running from her fingers, Hamida is a member of Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party and is responsible for recruiting slum-dwellers like herself to rallies — for a price.

For Yudhoyono’s main rally at the national stadium last Saturday, the payoff was a free T-shirt, a bus ride and Rp 35,000 ($3.50) in cash, she said. For recruiting 300 people, Hamida got to keep Rp 500,000 to herself.

Like nearly everyone interviewed in the slum, Hamida says she is a strong supporter of SBY, as the president is known. But she does business with any party, including presidential rivals Megawati Sukarnoputri’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and Vice President Jusuf Kalla’s Golkar Party.

“We’ve got [T-shirts] from Jusuf Kalla. We have yellow [Golkar] shirts. We have red PDI-P shirts. I do a mix,” she said. “With me, it may be SBY or Jusuf Kalla, yeah, I come along. If it’s Mega, I come along. Whoever.”

At legislative elections in April, Hamida helped a slew of parties get numbers onto the streets. Bags of rice, oil and sugar were part of the payoff, locals said.

Paying the poor for shows of strength on the street, as well as votes, has been entrenched across Indonesia’s political system since the mass rallies of former dictator Suharto’s New Order regime, Indonesia Corruption Watch’s Danang Widoyoko said.

“It’s a problem of the weakness of law enforcement. We also don’t have parties or candidates that are deeply rooted in society. It’s a legacy of the New Order,” Widoyoko said.

This, in spite of strides in combating corruption under the government of Yudhoyono, who was elected by a landslide in 2004 on an antigraft platform.

“In the case of SBY, he’s using the anticorruption issue as the main theme for the campaign. But what he says is different from what he does,” he said.

It is a practice followed by nearly all parties, Widoyoko said, a fact clear on the cramped streets of Hamida’s neighborhood.

Unemployed clothes seller Muhamad Rabu, 36, said he was paid to go to rallies for four different parties during the legislative elections in April, but he still voted with his conscience.

“Normally they give us money, Rp 20,000 or Rp 25,000. ‘Cigarette money’ is what people call it,” he said.

A packet of cigarettes costs up to Rp 10,000.

“I’ve been to a lot of parties’ rallies as a supporter: Golkar, Hanura, Democrats, PDI-P. I go along, but voting is something different.”

The extra money Hamida brings in makes her a popular figure in the slum. As she moves along one street, men near a public bathroom cheer, “Long live Hamida!”

Around 20 recruiters like Hamida work in the same central Jakarta district, according to her boss, Ning. Ning in turn works for the newly elected local member of the House of Representatives, a Democrat. It is unclear who is paying for it all. Two press people for Yudhoyono’s campaign did not return requests for comment.

As a recruiting strategy, it works. At Yudhoyono’s rally, a spectacle of pop bands and celebrities, streams of buses and motorbikes brought in crowds that packed the stadium.

Amid the stifling heat, Hamida filled 10 buses herself. She wore a T-shirt bearing the slogan: “Clean government for the people.”

AFP

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