Soeryo Winoto, Jakarta – On Sunday at the Bantar Gebang dumpsite in Bekasi, West Java, presidential candidate Megawati Soekarnoputri and her running mate Lt. Gen. (ret) Prabowo Subianto declared their readiness to join the July 8 election race. An unusual place for a political event.
Some described the move as proof of Megawati's care for the poor, but some say it was just a maneuver to draw public sympathy and was aimed at creating the impression of the pair's seriousness in taking sides with Indonesia's low-income earners. Hundreds or perhaps thousands of scavenger families live at the Bantar Gebang site.
The Megawati-Prabowo pair claim to be symbols of the struggles of poor people. Megawati, with her Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), is popular with her jargon, defending wong cilik (the little people), while Prabowo, the founder of the Great Indonesian Movement Party (Gerindra) claims to be concerned with poverty affecting farmers and fishermen.
In her speech in front of thousands of supporters, Megawati promised to improve the welfare of the poor if she is elected. While Prabowo, son of economic guru the late Prof. Soemitro Djojohadikusumo, blasted the government, saying the current administration had failed to bring prosperity to the people.
Amid the pair's flared-up speeches, it was interesting to watch supporters, who seemed to have forgotten Megawati's failure in addressing the fate of the poor when she was in power for three years, replacing Abdurrahman 'Gus Dur' Wahid from 2001 to 2004. Megawati and Prabowo's promises seemed to cure and remedy their prolonged hardships.
Megawati who was the Indonesia's fifth president, and her father Sukarno the first, is trying her luck to regain power. She had been defeated by her former chief security minister Gen. (ret) Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in the country's first direct presidential election in 2004. Megawati said the loss to Yudhoyono was like a stab from behind.
As a president, frankly, Megawati was not that impressive, except for her smile. She was not a talkative person anyway, but smiled in her official photograph distributed nation wide. Megawati hardly made any speeches and rarely appeared in public. Her silence had made people jokingly compare her pictures to that of Nyonya Meneer, the owner of a traditional herbal medicine company based in Semarang, Central Java. Never speak up but smile everywhere. That was how many people branded her as president. Her motto was probably "silence is golden." But it was not all gold behind her silence.
After the sickening defeat by Yudhoyono, Megawati has changed completely. She probably learned of her weaknesses. At various public appearances Megawati has appeared more aggressive and more vigorous. She is now determined to come back and prove who she really is.
The 2009 election is considered the right time to compensate for what she had not done or had not known.
Megawati is probably now more aware of the cultures and attitudes of most of her supporters (or maybe constituents), who prefer dreams to reality. Most people prefer spending hours in front of televisions – not to miss gossip or sinetron (Indonesian soap operas), which offer dreams more than education.
But Megawati did little to help the poor when she was president. Her recent rhetoric and political promises have likely hypnotized her supporters, who love to dream and yet remain poor all the time. In her Bantar Gebang declaration, Megawati promised to increase the welfare of the poor, a promise that should have been realized while she was in power. The supporters may have forgotten this.
And while the choice of the Bantar Gebang dumpsite was political marketing that the other candidates hadn't thought of, it's not enough to prove that Megawati and Prabowo are real populists.
[The writer is a journalist.]