Celebrity Politics Led Inanimate Political Condition
Almira Fidela Artha
airafidel@gmail.com
The existence of artists in Indonesia is very entertaining for society. Even, every artist always has thousand or maybe million fans and big fans spread over an area. By this condition, the popularity of artists were highlighted by political parties in Indonesia to join in legislative election. Each political party is competing to get vote as much as possible in order to get seat in Senayan using artist popularity. In other word, if a party has many cadres who sit in Senayan, it will increase the electability of the party in the presidential election. Therefore, celebrity politics phenomena should be avoided because it can lead us to inanimate political condition.
Firstly, celebrity is just as a vote getter for political party to grab a seat in legislative election. In this decade, celebrity politics phenomena increasingly widespread. The function of artists are not only as entertainer, but also as a regulator for society. Using the popularity of artists are the easiest way for political parties to find more seat in legislative election because political parties will not spend much cost to promote their candidate. Clearly, this celebrity politics phenomena is instant way that political parties had done to get power. Akbar Tanjung, a former chairman of the Functional Groups Party (Golkar) (“Caleg Artis Non”:2013), states that he was dissapointed because a lot of legislative candidate are not from caderization process but instantly from some groups who have certain power such us artists, investors, businessmen. He also claims that it had violated the principles of democratic caused functions of political parties diverge.
