Abdul Khalik, Jakarta – Along the East to North Jakarta stretch of Jl. Gen. D.I. Panjaitan, barely a blank space can be seen among the sea of campaign posters and banners covering the roadside for the 3,000 legislative candidates fighting for seats in the Jakarta legislative bodies.
If one was to travel anywhere else in the city, they would be met with a similar scene.
It seems most candidates believe plastering the streets within their electorates with as many posters as possible means they have conducted a thorough campaign, or have successfully lured voters ahead of the April 9 national and legislative elections.
But for many citizens of Jakarta, mere posters and banners mean nothing at all, particularly when they do not recognize the faces they depict. "They [candidates] seem to just put their faces everywhere. But how we can vote for them if we don't know who they are," Kemal Said, a resident of Cililitan, East Jakarta, said.
Dahlia Umar, a member of the Jakarta Election Commission, predicted an increasing amount of campaign material would be displayed throughout the city as the elections draw nearer. "We just hope they don't litter the city too significantly in the process," she said.
At the national level, with hundreds of thousands of people racing to become legislators at central and regional legislative bodies, areas have been flooded with posters and banners for candidates, creating confusion and irritating many civilians.
"Suddenly, posters cover my neighborhood. Posters, for somebody I don't even know, have been placed right in front of my home. Who are they? They just make my surroundings dirty," Rosmawati, a resident at the Puri Gading residential estate in Bekasi, West Java, said. "They can forget my vote. The posters just frustrate me," she said.
With a total of over 5,000 candidates competing in the city and regency of Bekasi, the competition to outstrip opposition with promotional material has been fierce throughout the region.
Political communication expert at the University of Indonesia Effendi Ghazali said many candidates mistakenly believed that by erecting posters everywhere imaginable, they have somehow introduced themselves to voters.
"I think candidates panic when they are confronted with large posters of their opposition everywhere. So, they feel they must match that efforts by distributing as much campaign material as possible, whereas this may actually be counterproductive in the long run," he said.
A recent law passed by the Constitutional Court, which rules that the candidate who wins the most votes in a region for his party automatically wins a seat, has triggered panic among competing individuals, Effendi said, and led to even more furious campaigning and advertising across the country.
"Now, they are competing with both their party colleagues and also opposing parties," he said.
Effendi said candidates had forgotten people will eventually grow tired and frustrated with this technique of mass campaigning, and also with having their surroundings being polluted. "The posters and banners will, in fact, drive voters away," he said.
Effendi said candidates within parties should work together to design a pamphlet containing their individual profiles, history and vision for voters, as opposed to spending huge amounts of money on posters and banners.
"They should visit homes within their regions with the brochures so they can introduce themselves personally," he said. The more candidates make the effort to visit their voters directly, the more likely they were of attracting voters in the upcoming elections, he said.
Muhammad Iqbal, a resident of Pasar Minggu, South Jakarta, said none of the candidates in his area ever visited his neighborhood or introduced themselves, to the point where he did not even know the names of any potential leaders.
"It would be great if they came, talked to us, and listened to our questions. If that occurred, we would probably vote for them," he said.