Adisti Sukma Sawitri, Jakarta – The campaign season for the Jakarta governor elections may be long over, but political parties are still making efforts to communicate with their constituents on every possible occasion.
Since the beginning of Ramadhan, political parties have displayed banners across the city in an attempt to greet and encourage Muslims to fast during the holy month. Unlike previous years, the banners now also display pictures of the parties' leaders.
Printing merchant Nefli Munir said orders for Ramadhan greeting banners from political parties had tripled to reach as many as 3,000 pieces this year. He added most parties requested their leaders' faces be displayed on the banners.
"This is a result of the new direct election system. These parties know that it is not only their parties that matter, but also their leaders and members who may run for office," he told The Jakarta Post on Friday at his workshop on Jl. Percetakan Negara, in Central Jakarta.
Nefli's printing business has also recently been bombarded with orders from regions outside of Jakarta, especially those that are preparing to hold regional leader elections.
As no sophisticated printing and offset printing industry is available outside of Java, political parties and their candidates from other islands usually order their banners, t-shirts, pamphlets and other materials for their regional election campaigns in Jakarta.
Printing workshops that are able to quickly produce photo-featured banners are mostly located around the city's border areas, while smaller printing workshops can be found all over the city.
Another printing merchant, Muhammad Idrus, who has a workshop in Cibubur, East Jakarta, said there was a changing pattern in political parties' requests for Ramadhan greetings this year.
He said this year he had received more requests from political parties than their members, whereas last year it was the members who made the most orders. "I think the parties are starting to build up their images in preparation for the 2009 presidential election," Idrus said.
He said the parties might learn from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), which had regularly placed banners around the city to promote its Jakarta governor hopeful Adang Daradjatun one year before the election.
Idrus said Adang and PKS had begun placing orders for banners on every possible occasion last year, while incumbent Fauzi Bowo and his 19 supporting parties only choose big occasions to promote themselves.
Fauzi won the election by attaining 58 percent of the total 3.6 million counted ballots last month.
Political expert Andrinof Chaniago of the University of Indonesia said the frequent use of advertising banners by political parties indicates there is an increased awareness of marketing strategies in winning local elections in the country. However, this did not indicate there was major progress in the city's political development.
"These parties are still using pragmatic ways to interact with voters yet still fail to fulfill their roles as social engines of change that are supposed to assist the community," he said. Andrinof said political parties still needed to make extra efforts to woo voters, who have become more selective in choosing their leaders.
A member of the Jakarta Chapter of the National Mandate Party (PAN), Eriswan Hasan, who also owns a printing company, said he preferred private companies as his clients. "Political parties or candidates often make orders through middlemen, which makes it hard to ask for payment," he said.
Nefli, who has been in the business since the late 1990s, still recalls when members of a certain political party were only able to pay their debts to him once the country had changed presidents for the third time since Soeharto.
"Above all, we still need to be very careful with politicians, big or small, since all of them are smooth talkers."