Cherry Picking
Third, the losing candidates also fell into a fallacy called “cherry-picking”, by which they accused the government’s social assistance (bansos) program of having been abused to sway voters to choose Prabowo-Gibran.
The cherry-picking fallacy occurs when an argument highlights evidence that supports its conclusion, while ignoring significant evidence to the contrary. Presenting facts in this selective manner can distort the overall picture and yield misleading conclusions. This method is often used to deny something in a seemingly scientific manner, such as on global warming. For example, by deliberately choosing the right time period, 1998–2012, to give the impression that global warming is slowing down, when in fact the earth’s temperature has been on a steady rise since 1880.
Teams No 1 and 3 were adamant that the disbursement of social assistance in the form of 10-kg bags of rice and direct cash assistance (BLT) by the government played a pivotal role in boosting Prabowo-Gibran’s vote share. I don’t know what data they used, but this notion has been refuted by a survey conducted by pollster Indikator Politik Indonesia.
It found that the majority of the respondents comprising current recipients, former recipients and non-recipients voted for Prabowo-Gibran. In other words, social assistance was a non-factor.
“The pattern we found was that the majority supported Prabowo-Gibran, regardless of social assistance. Among the social assistance recipients, only 59.7 percent voted for Prabowo-Gibran, 23 percent voted for Anies-Muhaimin while 17.3 percent went to Ganjar-Mahfud,” said Rizka Halida, the lead researcher at Indikator Politik Indonesia, Wednesday (21/2).
The figure was not much different compared with respondents from the other groups. Among non-recipients, Prabowo-Gibran garnered 56.9 percent support (versus 27 percent for Anies-Muhaimin and 16.1 percent for Ganjar-Mahfud.
“We didn’t see a wide disparity among the different respondent groups. For example, those who did not receive social assistance did not vote for Prabowo, and vice versa. It means that the effect of social assistance in the voting preference has not been conclusively proven,” said Rizka.
According to Indikator Politik Indonesia executive director Burhanuddin Muhtadi, further research went into what boosted Prabowo-Gibran’s votes. He theorized that it could be President Jokowi’s high approval rate, which hit 80 percent.
“We need to figure out whether there was a correlation between the social assistance recipients with President Jokowi’s approval rate. But we know that Jokowi’s popularity had a coattail effect on Prabowo-Gibran’s electoral performance. Maybe that will yield more nuanced findings,” said Burhanuddin.
So, could it be that the losing candidates only use social assistance as a convenient scapegoat to explain Prabowo-Gibran’s single-round win with a huge lead?
Time to reunite
Despite the logical fallacies, we have to commend the losing teams’ decision to peacefully settle the election result dispute in court. This is a good role model for our democracy.
The Constitutional Court (MK) ruling has sealed Prabowo-Gibran’s victory, for a team who managed to secure the largest number of votes in the history of direct presidential elections in Indonesia.
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The 2024 election is over. Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka have been formally declared as the election victors by KPU on Wednesday (24/4). Now is the time for us to reunite and work together to build the nation and ensure a prosperous future. Prabowo has even welcomed the idea of a unity government by embracing his rivals, just as President Jokowi invited him into the cabinet after the 2019 election.
We have also seen that a number of political parties have congratulated the winner and initiated political communication. From Team No 1, NasDem Party chairman has met with both President Jokowi and Prabowo. Meanwhile, Team No 3 still seems ambivalent on how to respond to their candidate’s loss. PDI-P secretary general Hasto Kristiyanto has continued to act combatively, while House speaker Puan Maharani sounds conciliatory. I think Puan is sending a signal that PDI-P is willing to join the cabinet or at least to form a cordial relationship with a Prabowo administration.
We are well-served to remember the remark by Indonesia’s founding father and first president, Sukarno: “General elections should not be a place for party struggles that can divide the Indonesian nation.”