Money Politics vs. Political Cost; Enforcing and Honest Democracy

Elections require costs, because there are a number of expenses to succeed during the campaign, this is what is referred to as political costs. In addition to political costs, a phenomenon arises in the current democratic system in Indonesia, prevalently called by money politics. There were many cases of campaign violations that used money politics to get as many votes as possible. The purpose of writing this article is to explain the political costs and money politics in the process of democracy in Indonesia especially in the electoral district of South Sumatra 1. In addition, the study wanted to describe how persuasive political communication can be a strategy for low cost campaign but still effective to gain a lot of votes. This is a qualitative using the case study method. The subject of this study was the elected legislators during the period of 2014-2019 with a significant vote acquisition in their electoral district of South Sumatra 1. The results of the study showed that not all electoral participants practiced money politics, evidently there were successfull candidates for the South Sumatra electoral district 1 without money politics, even only with low to moderate costs of politics. The legislative candidate for the South Sumatra electoral district 1 in his campaign carried out persuasive political communication as a campaign strategy. The candidates apply two main strategies; direct communication towards constituents and using an opinion leader (Opinion Leader). The communication patterns applied are face to face with constituents, as well as using mass media.