The Politics of Tionghoa at Grassroots Level (A Study of The Village Head of Tionghoa in Bangka Islands)
Ibrahim Ibrahim, Sandy Pratama, Rendy Rendy, Putra Pratama Saputra
Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Bangka Belitung University
Abstract
In the long term, the Tionghoa have avoided electoral political dynamics. Even further, Tionghoa ethnic groups avoid social spaces that openly connote the political world. Marginalisation and discrimination are the two right words to describe the position of the ethnic Tionghoa until later the situation changes along with the fall of the New Order and the onset of reform. The emergence of Ahok with its various dynamics has at least become one of the momentum of the rise of ethnic Tionghoa in the political world. In smaller spaces, at the village level, the phenomenon of the election of village heads from Tionghoa ethnic groups illustrates political change at the grassroots level. This paper, through qualitative research methods, explores how the dynamics of power of the ethnic Tionghoa who become village heads on Bangka Island. Interestingly, the ethnic Tionghoa who have been known to be apolitical, then enter public spaces that come in direct contact with diversity. This paper finds that actually Tionghoa politics at the village level has its own dynamics. Democracy that develops, extends at the village level and increases the political participation of ethnic Tionghoa. Not because of the phenomenal influence of Ahok, but political elites at the village level actually pioneered careers from community social organizations. When serving as Village Heads, they generally played a dynamic role and carried out a politics of pluralism, an anomaly when the early reforms of their desires were dominated by long-lost identity claims.
Keywords: Tionghoa, Electoral, Village Head
Topic: International Symposium on Social Sciences, Humanities, Education, and Religious Studies