Jayanty Nada Shofa & Ichsan Ali, Jakarta – Indonesia recently held the world's largest single-day election. However, the country's decision to have its citizens elect not only its president but also parliamentary representatives on the same day has caused the media to mainly focus on the presidential race, according to an election watchdog. This prevented the legislative election from getting that much media attention, resulting in people being unaware of who was running for the House of Representatives.

"I would say the election's simultaneous nature was what caused [the legislative race not getting enough attention]. We had 5 elections in one day, and everyone could not help but focus on the presidential election," Khoirunnisa Agustyati, the executive director of the Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem), told reporters in Jakarta on Tuesday.

"That is why the public was unable to see much of the local issues, as well as the regional representative candidates. Almost every day, it is the presidential election that is being talked about, but we were not just electing the next president here," Khoirunnisa said.

As a result, people only decided their legislative picks on the day of the election.

"Many people were unaware that we would not only vote for the president in the Feb. 14 election... So people were unable to be empowered voters because they had only decided on their [legislative candidates] on the day of the election," Khoirunnisa said.

At the polling station, a voter would receive five ballot papers. They were for the president-vice president pairing, as well as members of the House and Regional Representative Council. Voters also elected members of the local legislative bodies at the provincial and city/regency levels.

According to the latest count of the ballots in the House election, the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) claimed 16.49 percent of the total votes. The data covers 65.06 percent of the total polling stations.

Comedian Alfiansyah Komeng recently made headlines for his landslide victory in the preliminary results of West Java's regional representative council election. The celebrity secured over 2.3 million votes, representing 20.7 percent of the total votes. Komeng went viral for his goofy ballot photo.

Source: https://jakartaglobe.id/news/simultaneous-elections-cause-media-to-only-focus-on-presidential-race