In Indonesia, the years 2016 to 2019 have become known as the dynamical Years of Politics. They are years in which national energy and concern has been oriented towards election and leadership issues. In 2016, public concern was drawn to the Jakarta Gubernatorial Election, in which the incumbent Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (better known as Ahok) was defeated. Although this was a local election, the Jakarta Gubernatorial Election drew national and international both because Jakarta is the capital of Indonesia and because Ahok's leadership style had become a subject of public discussion. Although the election of new leaders is commonplace in democracy, in Indonesia these political activities were not simple political practice. The Jakarta Gubernatorial Election (2017) and the Indonesian Presidential Election (2019) sharply polarized Indonesian society. These elections involved not only the contestation of individual candidates, but of ideologies. Contestations occurred not only in formal politics, but also in art; poetry was a particularly significant medium of contestation. This study shows that politicians used poetry as a tool to promote their own ideology. It also finds that the substantial 'truth' of a poem was not as important as the beliefs espoused within them. As such, the Indonesian people have entered a post-truth era, with post-truth and ideologies producing a postmodern cultural model, a hyperreal society incapable of distinguishing between truth and fantasy. In this model, "awareness" (ideology) defines "reality".
Volume 12 | Issue 7
Pages: 674-685
DOI: 10.5373/JARDCS/V12I7/20202050