Jakarta. Indonesian political parties tend to focus heavily on promotional gimmicks in their attempt to differ themselves from others and attract extra attention from voters rather than serious campaigns and policies to assert what they really stand for, renowned political analyst Yunarto Wijaya said on Thursday.

The General Election Commission, or KPU, has approved as many as 17 parties to participate in the 2024 elections and voters will find a hard time finding one that really represents their interests, he said.

“It’s very difficult for the people to identify political parties by anything other than their name, numerical sequence, and slogans,” Yunarto said during a BTV talk show in Jakarta.

“It’s an unfair comparison to how easily we can identify between the Democrats and the Republicans in the United States. They have sharply different views on taxes and on whether the state and the church should be separated,” he added.

“But here we merely talk about marketing tools.”

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The executive director of research and consultant firm Charta Politika Indonesia said all parties are in the race to get as big crowds as possible while not realizing that “many people do attend the event because of the ndang dut singer rather than the candidates”.

“Public rallies do not actually have major electoral effects,” he said.

“Look at the US, they now prefer town hall meetings involving 200 to 300 people to debate on one very specific issue,” Yunarto said.

When US political dynamics become a benchmark, Yunarto may need to make an exception: GOP’s de facto leader Donald Trump also loves to speak about his crowd size.