Luh De Suriyani , The Jakarta Post , Denpasar | Tue, 03/17/2009 3:42 PM | The Archipelago
Five vendors and porters at Pasar Badung, the island's largest traditional market, broke into fits of laughter when asked about the upcoming legislative election.
They said they neither knew when voting day was nor knew anything about the competing candidates.
"A more important thing to do now is to earn more money for Galungan, Kuningan and Nyepi," I Wayan Darsa, a coconut leaves vendor, said.
This March is a religiously busy period for the Balinese Hindus, as three major festivals take place this month.
The festivals are Galungan and Kuningan, which celebrate the victory of Dharma (virtue) over Adharma (vice); Nyepi, which ushers in the Saka lunar new year; and Panca Wali Krama, an island-wide sacrificial ritual held once every 10 years.
The main ceremony of Panca Wali Krama will take place at Besakih mother temple and usually attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims and volunteers.
Every Balinese Hindu festival takes days, and sometimes weeks, to prepare. Galungan and Kuningan have Balinese families scrambling for ritual and offering paraphernalia for a week before the actual festival, while Panca Wali Krama needs a three-month-long preparation period.
It is no wonder that these days the minds of Balinese people are more occupied with religious festivals than with anything else, including the election.
Curiously, a meatball vendor, Imin, who hails from Solo, Central Java and is not an adherent of Balinese Hinduism, displayed similar lack of interest toward the election. The man, who has lived in Bali for 10 years, claimed that thoughts of the election never crossed his mind.
" If the officials of my banjar (traditional neighborhood organization) insist that I cast my vote then I will choose my candidate the moment I enter the voting booth," he said.
"They *the candidates and political parties* are all the same, after all," he added.
Even a candidate acknowledged that a large number of the public is indifferent to the election. This political impassivity, Winarty Eka Widiastuti admitted, has made it very difficult for a candidate to launch an effective campaign. Widiastuti, who is running for a
seat on the Badung regency legislative council, said his campaign team was forced to make a critical adjustment to cope with the difficult situation.
"Our team scrapped the plan to conduct huge, outdoor gatherings and opted for a door-to-door campaign instead," she said.
"Even without the presence of so many religious festivals, the situation was already difficult," she added.
Head of the Denpasar General Elections Commission (KPUD) Ray Misno said he was fully aware of the public's lack of interest toward the election. However, being a top election official, Misno admitted, he had no choice but to be optimistic.
"No matter what, I have to be optimistic that the election will go off successfully," he said.
Another sign of the public's lack of interest concerns the list of registered voters (DPT) officially issued by the elections commission. Copies of the list have been distributed and displayed on announcement boards in community halls across Bali.
"Yet only a few residents bothered to read and inspect the list to check whether their names were listed there," Misno lamented.
Lack of public interest is not the only thing that is giving Misno a constant headache these days. The new method of casting ballots and the oversized ballot papers are expected to delay the voting process, as well as the ballot counting.
Several voting simulations held by the commission show that the average time spent by a voter to cast a ballot is five minutes. It means the ballot counting could go on up to midnight.
"This will be a hard election, both for the elections commission and the voters," he said.
He failed to mention that it will be a hard election for the candidates too. In the upcoming election there will be 5,065 candidates from 36 political parties competing for 399 seats in Bali. It means 92 percent of the candidates will not get their coveted seats.