The failure of the state in providing good public service for the community has become one of the causes of the increased practices of money politics in local direct elections. Candidates made the poor public services a political commodity in order to obtain votes.
Meanwhile, next in the second place is the HI-101 of Electronic
Polytechnic Engineering Institute Surabaya (PENS) and in third place is
Siliwangi Polban (Bandung State Polytechnic). In the KRCI Wheeled
Contest, each team tried to locate and extinguish a fire in a random
space given bed barrier, mirrors, silencers, and furniture. "We really
did not expect that we would win. Apart from our technical readiness,
the other team also met some constraints," explained the team spokesman,
Farid Irawan.
IGI Ardiyanto, S.T., one of the Ironfire team supervisors, said they
achieved the victory after passing three rounds. After these stages and
the average being calculated, Ironfire managed to collect the minimum
value, 3.70 seconds, compared to its opponents, the HI-101 (5.19
seconds) and Siliwangi Polban (16.63 seconds). "Here, the team with the
least value wins," Igi explained.
In this robotic national championship, the UGM team also won several other prestigious titles, namely the third winner of Indonesian Robot Contest (KRI), the second of Indonesian Intelligent Legged Robot Contest (KRCI), while the Gadjah Made robot won the best design in Indonesia Art Robot Contest (KRSI).
Similar opinion was presented by Wawan Mas’udi. According to Wawan, money politics is determinant in Indonesia’s democracy. Money politics is the tendency in countries that have placed the process of democratic elections in their political systems. Actually, in a healthy democratic system, the money should have been more used as a tool to deliver thoughts and ideas. Through the money, ideas and thought were used to reach voters. "By contrast, in Indonesia, the money is used dramatically. Money is not used as an instrument, but a substance, to obtain people’s support by offering them money in the form of asphalt, bridges, and culverts," he explained.
The rise of money politics in local direct elections in Indonesia will continue to take place as long as the structural conditions of the community are still crippled in terms of education, information and knowledge, in addition to the strong business interests in the election.