General Election: Between Money Politics and Political Identity

DOI

10.2991/icosop-16.2017.60How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Political Party, Parliament and General Election

Abstract

North Sumatra is a richly multi-ethnic province is made up of dozens of ethnic groups, both indigenous to the province and migrants or their descendants. Overall, groups 'indigenous' to the province make up about 36percent; the rest are migrants where the majority of them are Javanese. Although the city famous pluralism and openness, as well as money politics is rampant, primordialism sometimes a factor in local politics. In the mayoral election in 2010 in the city of Medan, for example, although most of the city's Muslims recently that Rahudman Harahap background questionable when it comes to honesty, there is a campaign that is very powerful and effective way to mobilize their support behind him, given that his rival in the second round mayor race is Sofyan Tan, an ethnic Chinese and Buddhist. Ethnic Chinese and, to a lesser extent, non-Muslims also rallied behind Tan, though not so openly (Aspinall, Warburton and Dettman 2011). As stressed throughout this paper, the choice of a system of Proportional Representation (PR) lists open intensive level of competition between the candidates, especially between candidates of the same party. One interesting result, in the field as in many other parts of the country, is the high level of turnover positions: for DPRD Medan for example, only 30 per cent of the successful candidates were established. Patronage is important, though it comes in many forms - not just the distribution of individual gifts and cash, but also long-term social assistance program that the candidate has in some cases been providing for years. As a result, it tends to only the wealthiest candidates - those who have significant personal assets they have, or can borrow or take donations from relatives or rich sponsors - which has a strong chance of victory. Only a few candidates entered the political rivalry with clear ideas on development policies or government programs.

Copyright

© 2017, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Ahmad Taufan Damanik
PY  - 2016/11
DA  - 2016/11
TI  - General Election: Between Money Politics and Political Identity
BT  - Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Social and Political Development (ICOSOP 2016)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 441
EP  - 449
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icosop-16.2017.60
DO  - 10.2991/icosop-16.2017.60
ID  - Damanik2016/11
ER  -