Remind Not To Be Easily Provoked Ahead Of Registration For Presidential And Vice Presidential Candidates 2024, KPU: Now Is The Era Of Post Truth

KPU building in Central Jakarta. (Between)

The General Election Commission (KPU) appealed to the public not to be easily provoked by fake news or hoaxes ahead of the registration of presidential and vice-presidential candidates scheduled to start from 19-25 November 2023. "Now in the post-truth era, people are easily provoked by things that are not factual, actual, even engineered," said KPU member Idham Holik in Jakarta, Friday, October 13, quoted by Antara. In using freedom of expression, continued Idham, the Indonesian people need to prioritize national ethics based on Pancasila values. "So, freedom of expression is ethical; because so far in some places, not only in Indonesia, if freedom of expression is unethical, it will create conflict," he explained. He also invited the entire community not to be easily provoked by fighting against each other which was deliberately carried out by a number of elements, considering that elections were quite vulnerable to disintegration. The public must be smart in filtering information circulating on social media because fake news is very easy to spread.

Meanwhile, the Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) predicts that the peak spread of hoaxes regarding the 2024 General Election on social media will occur in February 2024. This reflects on the phenomenon that occurred in the 2019 General Election, where the peak of hoaxes occurred in April 2019, when the campaign stages ended, until before the vote. "At the moment, it is not impossible, the hoax will increase and peak at the end of November 2023, at the campaign stage until early February 2024, before the voting stage," said RI Bawaslu Member Herwyn J. H. Malonda in Jakarta, Saturday 2 September. Based on data in the 2019 Election, continued Herwyn, as many as 501 hoax issues spread ahead of the voting stage. This situation needs to be anticipated because it has an impact on the quality of elections that can strengthen the emergence of polarization in the community, the emergence of distrust in election organizers, and the public does not believe in the election results; so that it has an impact on conflict to violence.