Citizen Responses See Regional Heads When Faced With Demonstrations On The Job Creation Law

Illustration of regional leaders when dealing with demonstrations against the Job Creation Law (doc. Netray)

JAKARTA - During the past week, demonstrations against the Job Creation Law have not only occurred in DKI Jakarta. A number of other areas such as Bandung, Surabaya, Solo and Yogyakarta were not spared from demonstrations.

It is the duty of local governments to deal with mass demonstrations like this. Although what is being protested is the result of central policies, the regional government is a representation of the state at the local level.

The involvement of the regional government in the discourse on the rejection of the Omnibus Law has raised a number of names of regional leaders in public discussions. In the realm of social media, netizens often associate their names in a tweet with various kinds of sentiments and interests.

Based on Netray's monitoring media, he monitors a number of regional heads who appear in conversations with netizens regarding the Job Creation Law. Some regional leaders whose names are often reported by netizens include: Ridwan Kamil, Tri Risma, Ganjar Pranowo, to Anies Baswedan.

In general, the week's monitoring of regional leaders succeeded in summarizing at least more than 22 thousand warganet tweets. 50 percent of indexed tweets contain sentiment with details of 5,848 positive sentiments. While 6,718 have negative sentiment.

"The mayor of Surabaya Tri Rismaharini or who is often called Mrs. Risma, often appears in discussions regarding the Work Creation Act protests. Her name sticks out when Risma scolds a demonstrator who has damaged public facilities in Surabaya," Netray wrote, Wednesday, October 14.

This action was supported by many citizens, given Risma's image as a regional leader who likes to scold people who are considered to be disturbing and destroying the order of Surabaya City. Warganet gave more than 124 thousand positive responses to Risma.

trend of monitoring the name of the Mayor of Surabaya, Tri Rismaharini (doc. Netray)

The second regional leader whose name has appeared frequently recently is West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil. The governor, who is often called by the name Kang Emil, received a positive response from netizens when he faced protesters in Bandung at a mass rally on October 8.

"He went directly to meet the masses and agreed to issue a letter that conveyed the aspirations of the demonstrators to reject the Omnibus Law on Cipta Kerja," quoted VOI .

DKI Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan, indeed became the main focus when the concentration of mass demonstrations against the Job Creation Law took place in the center of government. The reports from online news portals at that time on the figure of Anies were of course very mixed.

His efforts were no exception to take part in the mass demonstration against the Job Creation Law. In this regard, for some people it is a wise step that will somehow transform into political support for the upcoming presidential election. However, not a few also saw it with cynical glasses.

Warganet response to Anies Baswedan (doc. Netray)

What is clear is that the discussion about Anies Baswedan's actions in this situation goes far beyond the two previous regional leaders. There were 16,065 tweets recorded during the week with a total impression of more than 188 thousand and reaching 80.4 million Twitter users.

Although negative sentiment looks stable for a week with a total of 4,807 tweets, Anies's appearance in the midst of the demonstrators managed to boost positive sentiment towards him 3,391 tweets.

The last regional leader in this monitoring was the Governor of Central Java Ganjar Pranowo. Just like other regional leaders, outside DKI Jakarta and special autonomy, the conversations that mention Ganjar's name are still largely dominated by the issue of handling the corona virus outbreak.

And just when on October 8, the discourse of conversation shifted to the Governor's action against demonstrators. Unlike other regional leaders, Ganjar's name does not appear very often in warganet conversation.

Monitoring the response of netizens to Ganjar Pranowo (doc. Netray)

Netray only managed to collect 458 tweets in one week of monitoring. And it only resulted in 183 tweets with positive sentiment and 63 tweets with negative sentiment. However, when compared to other data, Ganjar's presence has a big impact on the conversation among netizens on Twitter.

In fact, each regional leader faced the situation in his own way. Likewise, the response from related citizens to the actions of regional leaders when dealing with demonstrators rejected the Job Creation Law.