Dirty Vote Documentary Film: Exposing President Jokowi's Dirty Maneuvers in the 2024 Election

Legal Literacy - The 2024 general election contest feels very different this time. President Jokowi's dirty maneuver in winning his eldest son Gibran Rakabuming Raka in the 2024 presidential election contest is the main factor in the heat of the election which is colored by various acts of fraud from political elites to the grassroots. So what fraud occurred in the 2024 election and is discussed in this film?

3 experts in Constitutional Law, namely Bivitri Susanti (Lecturer at STH Jentera & Founder of the Center for Law and Policy Studies), Zainal Arifin Mochtar (Director of the Center for Anti-Corruption Studies, Faculty of Law, Gadjah Mada University), and Feri Amsari (Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Andalas University) revealed a number of election frauds that occurred in the 2024 election, which were dominated by massive and structured fraud committed by President Joko Widodo and his coalition. Various frauds in the 2024 election were clearly explained by the three legal experts in a documentary film entitled Dirty Vote, which aired on Sunday, February 11, 2024 on the channel youtube official PSHK Indonesia.

In the nearly 2-hour documentary, President Jokowi is said to have done everything possible to win the presidential election in one round of vote counting. If we refer to article 416 of Law Number 7 of 2017 concerning Elections, init requires a national vote acquisition of more than 50% with a victory in a minimum of 20% of the vote in each province spread across more than half the number of provinces in Indonesia. These requirements are what triggered President Jokowi to carry out various actions to support and win the candidate pair number 2 Prabowo Gibran in the 2024 Presidential Election.

Jokowi's inconsistency is clearly visible between his words and actions if we look at his track record over the past few months. A few months ago, the President instructed all ASN, TNI and Polri to be neutral in the election. However, on January 24, 2024, he stated that the president and his deputy may take sides and campaign. Even though it is justified by the Election Law, of course there are strict requirements that must be carried out if he wants to use his right to campaign.

President Jokowi's authority to determine the Acting Governor in each province is used as a means to place 'palace pawns' in various strategic electoral districts which are the target of vote barns for the Prabowo Gibran candidate pair. Feri Amsari in the documentary explained a number of Acting regional heads who are close to Jokowi, such as the Acting Governor of West Java Bey Machmudin who once served as Head of the Presidential Secretariat Bureau in 2016, and Deputy of the Presidential Secretariat in 2021. In addition, there is also the Acting Governor of DKI Jakarta Heru Budi Hartono who once served as Head of the Presidential Secretariat in 2017, as well as the Acting Governor of Central Java Nana Sudjana who once served as Surakarta police chief in 2010.

Apart from placing the president's confidants, the Palace also put pressure on many village heads to win the presidential and vice presidential candidate pair number 2. Zainal Arifin Mochtar said that village heads are an important factor in the election, because they have 4 authorities that have the potential to be misused, namely regarding voter data, use of village funds, data on social assistance recipients, and authority in the allocation of social assistance. The coalition ministers are also competing to campaign for the Prabowo-Gibran pair to each region, for the president's ambition of one round. All of these frauds are reviewed in full in the documentary film dirty vote.

In the documentary film dirty vote, Bivitri Safitri presents a diagram of the social assistance budget throughout 2014 to 2024. As a result, the social assistance budget consistently increased ahead of the elections in 2014, 2019, and 2024. The highest increase occurred in the era of President Jokowi, where in January 2024 alone, the government has disbursed funds of more than 78.06 trillion rupiah just to distribute social assistance massively to the community.

It is easy to guess President Jokowi's political tendency in the distribution of social assistance at the beginning of this year. The narrative 'social assistance from Jokowi' with the words 'assistance from the President of the Republic of Indonesia' clearly displayed on the social assistance packaging bag, provides clarity of the personification of assistance social to create a good image of President Jokowi and his coalition, to gather as much voter sympathy as possible from the lower middle class.

The flawed Constitutional Court decision number 90/PUU-XXI/2023 which passed Gibran's political path as a vice presidential candidate accompanying Prabowo Subianto was also discussed in this documentary film. The three experts constitutional law in the documentary film dirty vote discuss in detail and dismantle how the process of the Constitutional Court's decision was designed in such a way as a red carpet for the crown prince. The intervention of the Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court Anwar Usman, who is Gibran's uncle, in the decision seemed to be a black mark left by Jokowi at the end of his leadership as the number one person in this republic.

There are still many frauds that inPresident Jokowi committed in the 2024 election which were discussed in depth in the documentary film dirty vote, starting from efforts to pass political parties such as PKN, Partai Umat and Partai Gelora to become antitheses and break the voting period of opposition coalition parties. This film describes in detail how the thirst for power destroys the positive stigma of the president that he has built so far.