DPR More Criticized By Citizens During COVID-19 Pandemic

Illustrations (Irfan Meidianto / VOI)

JAKARTA - The Indonesian House of Representatives (DPR) received more criticism than appreciation for their work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This criticism from netizens for the DPR was monitored on social media by Netray from April 6 to May 5.

Of the total 99,413 tweets by netizens, most of them were negative sentiments. In detail, the tweet smelled of criticism 42,060 times, while the tweet had a positive sentiment of 39,267 times.

On the Netray Blog page, it was explained that there were several peaks of tweets, including on April 15, April 23, April 28, and May 03.

On April 15, netizens were busy discussing the issue of further discussion regarding the draft Omnibus Law in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic situation.

Anxiety and disappointment was implicit in the warganet's tweets. This is because the Omnibus Law on the Job Creation Bill which is currently being discussed has received a lot of resistance among the public. Warganet considered this inappropriate to do, and considered members of the council should focus on handling COVID-19.

One of the accounts that many netizens retweet is @ YongL4dy. "Chasing after what targets are chasing after the project? The DPR should understand the plight of the people, instead of discussing the Omnibus Law during the COVID-19 #DPR_AgenRUUCilaka outbreak," he tweeted.

Then, on April 23, there was a significant increase in the tweet graph. The topic discussed was related to Commission III of the DPR which appreciates the Police for its success in cracking down on perpetrators of increased crime during the pandemic.

Although this topic received the most tweets and climbed significantly during the monitoring period, it did not last long and fell back down in the next few hours.

Furthermore, on April 28, the DPR again drew criticism regarding traditional herbal products for COVID-19 patients. The herbs were imported from China by the DPR Task Force. This has drawn criticism from netizens.

"Herbal medicine entrepreneurs are disappointed, how come the COVID-19 Task Force imports herbal medicine from China?" chirping @privacy

Then, the discussion regarding the DPR RI peaked again on May 3. This conversation was related to Najwa Shihab's criticism of the DPR RI's performance during the pandemic period.

This senior journalist assessed that DPR members were not focused on dealing with the pandemic, but instead were eager to discuss a number of controversial bills.

Furthermore, during Netray's monitoring period, there were several peaks of netizen tweets criticizing the performance of DPR members. In their criticism, netizens asked the DPR to focus on preparing a strategy that took the side of the community, not with various steps deemed not in accordance with the main needs of the community.