Communication Strategy of Campaign’s Steps Monitoring in Local

Election 2018 by Election Supervisory Board

Fatmawati Moekahar, Abdul Aziz

Department of Communication, Faculty of Communication, Universitas Islam Riau, Pekanbaru, Indonesia

Keywords:

Strategy, Communication, Campaign.

Abstract:

This research is concerned with communication strategy in monitoring of campaign’s steps by the election su-

pervisory board in local election 2018, in the context of a theory of social action. Based on Laswell paradigm:

Who, Says what, In which channel, To whom, With what effect. This study uses qualitative methods with

descriptive studies. The results of this study says that the Election Supervisory Board in Riau Province to

monitoring of campaign’s steps in local election 2018 by changing the attitudes and behaviour of the election

participants through disseminating information or message related to rules. Communication strategies by the

election supervisory board to monitoring campaign’s steps as a political activity as well as an arena of ideas

and beliefs people have are systematically related to actual, and material conditions of existence.

1 INTRODUCTION

The stages of local election 2018 have been com-

pleted. The elected governor’s Riau 2019 - 2024 were

the pair Syamsuar - Edy Nasution. The pair has won

799.289 votes. Although the general election pro-

cess has been completed, efforts to improve the im-

plementation of electoral process to be continue. Es-

pecially by the organizers. Improvement efforts are

carried out through an evaluation mechanism for var-

ious stages of the implementation process. In terms of

supervision, the implementation of the elections con-

tained several ﬁndings of violations both administra-

tive and criminal by Bawaslu Riau (Election Supervi-

sory Board at Riau Province). Bawaslu Riau is one of

the election administration institutions in the province

as organizers of general elections that are given the

task and authority in overseeing the election of the

Governor.

Supervision is the activity of observing, review-

ing, examining, and assessing the process of orga-

nizing elections in accordance with laws and regula-

tions. The legal basis for the implementation of the

2018 elections is Law No. 07 of 2017 concerning

the implementation of elections. Research by Her-

minus (2017) says that it is very important that the

oversight process is carried out by the Supervisory

Committee because it can minimize the level of er-

rors in the election. Election supervision aims to en-

sure the implementation of elections in a direct, gen-

eral, free, conﬁdential, fair, and with the aims to real-

ize democratic elections, integrity, credibility, trans-

parency and accountability. In supervision, Bawaslu

often ﬁnds obstacles due to several things, includ-

ing: the existence of multiple interpretations of the

legislative rules of election participants, the lack of

public political education, limited understanding of

election supervisors at lower levels (Interview with

Rusidi Commissioner’s Bawaslu, September 5, 2018)

(Agustino, 2008). Because of that, it needs an appro-

priate monitoring strategy so that the election admin-

istration can run optimally. Furthermore, the Bawaslu

commissioner said that the election stage found the

most violations was during the campaign. For exam-

ple, in the second period of the campaign, there were

79 violations from the four pairs. The duration of time

is only monitored for 2 weeks, March, 2 – 14, 2018.

The violation consists of ﬁve forms, namely campaign

violations without Notiﬁcation Receipt (STTP), inad-

equate installation of Campaign Props (APK), use of

candidate governor stickers on vehicles, involvement

village head and the device, use of public facilities for

the campaign (Cangara, 2014a; Cangara, 2014b).

This research was conducted to ﬁnd out how the

Riau’s Bawaslu communication strategy in monitor-

ing the campaign stages in the Riau Election 2018.

The reason for choosing the campaign stages was be-

cause based on evaluation data from Riau Bawaslu,

the campaign stages were the most found violations

in the 2018 regional election. Considered as a quite

402

Moekahar, F. and Aziz, A.

Communication Strategy of Campaign’s Steps Monitoring in Local Election 2018 by Election Supervisory Board.

DOI: 10.5220/0009184604020405

In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Social, Economy, Education and Humanity (ICoSEEH 2019) - Sustainable Development in Developing Country for Facing Industrial

Revolution 4.0, pages 402-405

ISBN: 978-989-758-464-0

interesting step in terms of supervision because there

are technical interpretations of the rules from the elec-

tion participants with the election supervisory com-

mittee.

2 METHOD

The research method used is qualitative research with

descriptive approach. The descriptive qualitative re-

search aims to describe fact, condition, and situation

at the time. Qualitative descriptive research interprets

and tells data related to the situation that is happen-

ing. There were 10 informants, who was people who

had extensive experience and knowledge regarding

the topic of this research.

3 THEORITICAL REVIEW

In dealing with communication problems, planners

are faced with a number of problems, especially in

relation to the strategy of using available communi-

cation resources to achieve the goals to be achieved.

Rogers (1982) limits the notion of communication

strategies as a design to change human behavior on a

larger scale through the transfer of new ideas. A com-

munication planning expert Middleton (1980) makes

a deﬁnition by stating ”communication strategies are

the best combination of all communication elements

ranging from communicators, messages, channels

(media) to recipients to effects (effects) designed to

achieve communication goals”. The same as ex-

pressed by lasswell, he deﬁned to communication

strategies with ﬁve steps: Who, Says what, In which

channel, To whom, With what effect (Suryadi, 2018).

The choice of strategy is a crucial step that requires

careful handling in planning communication, because

if the choice of strategy is wrong or wrong then the

results obtained can be failure, especially losses in

terms of time, material and energy(Denzin and S.,

2005; Effendy and Uchjana, ; Alo, ).

The stages of communication strategies proposed

by Cutlip (Cutlip, 1962), Center and Broom (2006),

namely: 1. Develop goals both short term (as a com-

munication inﬂuence) and long term (as a relationship

gauge). 2. Planning a communication program to im-

prove goals. 3. Take action and communicate (by im-

plementing public programs, actions and communica-

tions designed to achieve speciﬁc goals for each pub-

lic in order to achieve program objectives) 4. Evaluate

the program by evaluating the preparation, implemen-

tation and results of the program. Fergusson (Fergu-

son, 1999) said communication planning is about sets

of action in a goals.

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Based on results, researchers categorize communica-

tion strategies by Lasswel paradigm:

Who

Who is about communicator. Communicator is a per-

son who is given task delivering a message to au-

diens. In this research, communicator is employee

of Bawaslu at the Riau Province, District/City, Sub-

District, and Village. A number of indicators related

to this component are: conﬁdence, credibility’s, fair-

ness, discipline, healthy, and knowledge.

Bawaslu Riau consist of ﬁve division. There are

monitoring division; prosecution of violation divi-

sion; human resources and organization division; law,

data and information division; and dispute resolution

division. Bawaslu Riau has formed 36 District/City

Supervisory Committee, 498 Sub-District, 1,859 Vil-

lage (PPL) and 11,920 (TPS Supervisors). In carrying

out its duty, Bawaslu Riau is assisted by secretariat

team. Bawaslu Riau of Secretariat is headed by the

Head of the Secretariat, which consists of 3 subdi-

visions, namely: the administrative sub-section, the

technical sub-division of the legal sub-section, public

relations and relations between institutions.

Says what

‘Says what’ is about a message. a message can be

effectively received by the audience if it fulﬁlls 3 main

things: message organization, message structure and

request message (Rakhmat and Surjaman, 1999). A

message is a set of rules about supervisory campaign

in local election. A set of rules consist of election law

(Law No.07 of 2017 and Law No. 10 of 2016), PKPU

No 1-5 of 2017, and other related regulation. Bawaslu

Riau have to monitoring of campaign steps in election

based on regulation.

In supervision of campaign based on KPU Reg-

ulation No.0 2 of 2018 concerning changes to KPU

Regulation No. 01 of 2017, about Programs and

Schedule for Implementation of Governor and Deputy

Governor Election, Regent and Mayor for local elec-

tion 2018. In supervision, Bawaslu Riau divide into

three activities:

• Preparing supervision

There were 5 vulnerabilities at the campaign

stage: 1) money politic. The use of money as a tool

for buying voice support and bribery both for voters

and for election organizers that can beneﬁt or harm

certain candidate pairs. Money is used by candidate

pairs to inﬂuence people’s choices. 2) black cam-

Communication Strategy of Campaign’s Steps Monitoring in Local Election 2018 by Election Supervisory Board

403

paign. Money politics in the form of covert cam-

paigns, false information, and negatives that utilize

online networks such as blogs, websites, and social

media that have a wide range, so that they can be

easily consumed by the public. This is used to ma-

nipulate public awareness so as to give a certain af-

fective response to couples. 3) use of state facilities,

especially by incumbent. 4) Mobilization of the State

Civil Apparatus 5) Use of Educational Facilities and

Places of Worship.

• Planning Supervision

Method’s Campaigns carried out by Political Par-

ties, Candidate and Campaign Teams :

• Limited meetings;

• Face-to-face and Dialogical meetings;

• Distribution of Campaign Materials to the public;

• Installation of Campaign Props (APK);

• Other activities that do not violate campaign pro-

hibitions and statutory provisions;

All forms of the campaign are a focus of super-

vised Bawaslu Riau. In the election of the Gover-

nor’s Riau held simultaneously in 2018. Time Sched-

ule of campaign supervision by Bawaslu Riau are as

follows:

Table 1: Time Schedule of Campaign supervision.

No Campaign Steps Start Finish

1 Limited meeting,

face to face, APK,

and other activi-

ties

February,

15, 2018

Jun, 23,

2018

2 Public Debate February,

15, 2018

Jun, 23,

2018

3 Campaign in

mass media

Jun, 10,

2018

Jun, 23,

2018

4 Quiet period Jun, 24,

2018

Jun, 26,

2018

Bawaslu Riau along with its ranks have tried to

work optimally to minimize and resolve any dynam-

ics and problems that occur at each stage. The su-

pervisory performance carried out by Bawaslu Riau

along with its ranks is a concrete step to prevent any

dynamics and problems in the election 2018.

Supervision strategy with the prevention of viola-

tions and the enforcement of violations, namely. Vi-

olation prevention is an action, steps, an early effort

to prevent potential violations that interfere with the

integrity of the process and election results. While

the enforcement of violations is a series of han-

dling violations that include ﬁndings, acceptance of

reports, collection of evidence, clariﬁcation, assess-

ment, and/or the provision of recommendations and

forwarding of the results of ﬁndings/reports to the au-

thorities to be action.

The strategies supervision’s campaign by Bawaslu

Riau: a) Drafting the insecurity map; b) Coordinate

and consolidate the relevant stakeholders; c) Direct

supervision at each steps; d) investigation; e) partici-

pative supervision.

• Supervision

Bawaslu Riau supervises in the form of Supervision

and Monitoring of supervision to Regency, District

and Village at each stage of the campaign. The Mon-

itoring Activities of Bawaslu Riau are as follows:

Table 2: Monitoring Activities for Campaign Steps by

Bawaslu Riau.

No Description Time Place

1 Campaign

supervision

and campaign

props (APK)

March,

28-29

2018

Kampar

2 Monitoring

to campaign

props (APK)

March, 7-

8 2018

Siak

3 Supervision

to Campaign

and Cam-

paign props

(APK)

March,

13-15

2018

Bengkalis

In the campaign stage the dynamics and problems

are always played by the candidate pairs and cam-

paign teams in taking community support. The cam-

paign stages in the election of the Governor’s Riau,

where during the campaign period all campaign teams

of the candidate pairs had committed campaign ad-

ministration violations, namely by not taking care of

STTP during the campaign. There was also a cam-

paign outside the campaign zone that had been jointly

established by all the Candidate Pairs, there were

also several candidate pairs who always campaigned

through meetings with reasoned citizens who were in-

vited by the residents and there was even money pol-

itics from the candidate team especially towards the

times the end of the campaign and can be proven up

to the District Court and convicted by the Judge. And

then, it was found the participation of the Village De-

vices, the Village Head and the involvement of ASN

in conducting campaign activities for one of the can-

didate pairs. There is still a Non APK one of the

candidate pairs still installed. the Campaign Team of

each Candidate Pair does not release a campaign no-

tiﬁcation letter to Bawaslu Riau.

• Evaluating Supervision

Bawaslu of Republic of Indonesia has forwarded the

circular letter concerning the supervisory work tool of

ICoSEEH 2019 - The Second International Conference on Social, Economy, Education, and Humanity

404

the election of governor in 2018 to Bawaslu province

and the ranks down. This is a guideline in con-

ducting supervision by Panwaslu District/city in Riau

province. With this surveillance tool is very helpful

Panwaslu Regency/city in conducting supervision of

the election of governor’s Riau.

In the supervision campaign, Bawaslu Riau and

Panwaslu District/city managed to coordinate well

with the District Panwaslu and PPL and the TPS su-

pervisor in making efforts to prevent potential viola-

tions in the rules Campaign. Coordination between

the Bawaslu Riau and KPU Riau both so that the elec-

tion of governor went well. The evaluation of supervi-

sion conducted socialization to the political party and

public about the understanding of regulation and the

sanction of violations at each sub-stage in the election

of Riau in 2018.

In which channel

Channel referred to here is media. Bawaslu Riau

used a several media to delivered message to audi-

ens. There are two categories media: mass media and

conventional media. Mass media used to large num-

ber and wide range. For examples: Radio, Television,

Newspaper, and baliho. Althought conventional me-

dia used to limited audiens and closed range. For ex-

amples: Bawaslu Riau give to announcement about

regulations to political parties.

To whom

The audience targeted at election supervision is all

election stakeholders, including: political parties,

candidate pairs, successful teams, and the public as

electoral voters. They come from a very diverse com-

munity, both religion, ethnicity, education and knowl-

edge. therefore it is possible to have different percep-

tions in receiving messages related to election regula-

tions.

With what effect

The expected impact of the supervisory activities car-

ried out by Bawaslu Riau is a change in attitudes and

behaviors that adhere to the rules of the election, es-

pecially related to election campaigns.

5 CONCLUSIONS

The results of this study says that the Election Su-

pervisory Board in Riau Province to monitoring of

campaign’s steps in local election 2018 by changing

the attitudes and behaviour of the election participants

through disseminating information or message related

to rules. Communication strategies by the election su-

pervisory board to monitoring campaign’s steps as a

political activity as well as an arena of ideas and be-

liefs people have are systematically related to actual,

and material conditions of existence.

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Cangara, H. (2014a). Komunikasi Politik: Konsep, Teori.

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Cutlip, S. M. (1962). Effective public relations. Pearson

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Denzin, N. K. and S., L. Y. (2005). Handbook of Qualitatif

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