DPM NUDC 2017 Final – As citizens, THW primarily base considerations to choose leaders based on “good political characters” rather than on policy

(Deputy Prime Minister) Cara Riantoputra, NUDC 2017 Indonesia, Grand Final 

Video Source: YouTube

Every politician has promised good policies, but the realization of those policies very rarely happens to the extent the politicians promises them, because the realization of the policy does not depend solely on that leader and what they advertised in their campaign.

The realization of a policy depends on many things, like externalities, you have constraints and circumstances, that made it very difficult to realize a policy, even if on paper, theoretically effective. You have to make sure you still cater to your lobbyist, you have to make sure, that suddenly when an economic crisis strikes, you can still demonstrate what you promised, you need to demonstrate that when you’re catering to people in international relations that people first need other things that other externalities and constraints, that this leader cannot necessarily control all of.

In status quo, politicians can get away with blaming all those externalities by saying  “I tried my best” “this is what I promised you, but I cant help it”, “I’m catering to many other people, and the circumstances simply do not allow this to come true” at least on our side of the house, we have someone, that in all of those constraints and all of those externalities will still make a decision that is morally correct, within the capacity of what a good leader should choose, so they don’t hide behind the veil of saying “I blame my externalities”, they will always make a choose based on what a good leader should make

Two clarifications before I go into the substantive material of my speech, I need to clarify that first of all,  its not likely that our policy will somehow become completely deprived of all quality, to say those primary consideration of voting for leaders, does not mean that when the leader comes into power, that they wont have a huge pool of advisors, most of whom are technocrats and will advise the leader on what to do, we also think that these leaders, because they display good leadership characteristics, are also not going to be one that’s entirely unintelligent, they will still create valued policies and the merits of those policies, and they’re therefore not unqualified, that is not what we need to defend from the team government.

We also have things like post election discussions, so when we have leaders  who are already in power, we have polls tally discussions, we can communicate our aspiration and the people in leadership position can still evaluate that, the difference is that now we evaluate that with the mindset of a good leader who is honest, respects the opinions of others, who is not just going to cater to by parties and interest but by the merit of the policy. But im still going to defend even if the policy isn’t as good as some of the (unintelligible) have a slogan review.

Second clarification, we think that the (unintelligible) is going to be skewed by manipulation, because I’ve already told you, that we’re going to make sure mechanistically that people is going to reflect on the good characteristic of this leader. We’re more than happy, for instance, to display the psychological test of these leaders to show that they do cater to the characteristic, so they do not only appear like they are good leaders but they actually are , and we think that what we all (unintelligible) are choosing so there will be far more scrutiny to these particular characteristic so its not going to be easy to lie.

I’m now going to talk about three things in my speech, first of all, I’ll talk about the decision making of the leader, and what kind of decision best benefit the people the most. Second I’ll talk about how we create a better place, talking about participation, about accessibility, and about discussion. So first, lets talk about the decision that benefit people the most.

Basically what they tell you is that decisions need to be objective informed and accountable and that is the  framework by which voters  should choose. The problem, is that in status quo, an information is highly asymmetrical (unintelligible) politician will tell you the policies they want, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re honest and it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re being completely open on the information they are giving. They need to defend the world in which due the multiple externalities, politicians are forced to change their policies and therefore the information that you get initially, during the election is of very little use in the future.

Also, when people are serving secret lobby and interest groups, it’s very likely that these politicians are catering to those groups in secret and not necessarily giving you the whole picture of what they’re going to pursue once in power, politicians always have interest to do so in their side of the house because those are the people to control them. They completely shift the incentive on government side of a house because now politicians know that people are only going to vote based on their character as something that is going to be proven by their psychology.

These politicians will try to show the people that their character is good and they will try to improve on that character, and their capacity as leader, as opposed to catering to those interest groups, so we think that the information and accountability in their side of the house, is (unintelligible).

We told you in our side of the house, which was not responded to, that politics is very unpredictable and it needs change over time. You never know what kind of problems we will face in the future, and it’s not necessarily true those problems will present themselves to you during the election therefore what we need in order to have a sustainable politician and sustainable politics is for you have a framework that is applicable to most circumstances. When you have politicians that is able to weigh out things in a rational way and listen to other perspective even if they come from a different party, even if they came from a sector of society that (unintelligible) did not (unintelligible) but is able to see the merit of the (unintelligible), would be able to judge them in an objective way and in a respectful way, then most likely no matter what Challenge you face in the future, this is a better framework to apply in a more sustainable way.

On the effectiveness of policies, ladies and gentlemen, we told you that effectiveness of policies is just as objective as (unintelligible) on their side of the house, because, One policy is effective for maybe the white middle class , but its not effective ladies and gentlemen for the minorities and people are going to perceive that differently.  On our side of the house at least when a leader knows “my policies effective for sector x of society, and they will recognize that I am disadvantaging sector y” and they are going to make an effort to make compromises and try to at least serve that sector Y even better, they recognize that. Politicians in their side of the house will not do so because they only make promises to a certain sectors of society decision making is far better at our side of the house.

We told you on the second layer a range of things that were not responded to but is very important in team government. We told you that you have better participation and turn out because people are sick of politics in status quo, because politician never deliver on their promises and its far more accessible for you to access and judge information based on character, its something the majority of people can understand.

Politics and these policies are most likely going to be complicated and (unintelligible sentence due to clapping) understand all of these things, but what I can understand and what I can judge a politician based on something that is related to me, and something that I can hold accountable to, most likely I will (unintelligible). As citizens, we prefer to live in a world where everyone is participating and we can actually hold our leaders accountable to what they are promising to us, we told you that it would create a better trust, and create better options because more politicians are able to access (unintelligible) so proud to oppose.