The linear relationship between regional elections and regional development has always been an actual topic to be discussed theoretically and practically. One of the reasons why regional elections are formed is to increase the acceleration of development in the regions because it is thought to be able to present representative leaders in serving the public interest. This theoretical assumption needs to be proven in contemporary political reality by seeing how far regional elections have succeeded in increasing welfare in the regions. This relationship was attempted to be portrayed in the Government Talkshow activity of the UMM Government Science Study Program, Thursday (7/6/2018) which took place in the Senate meeting room of the UMM FISIP. The Talkshow program is one of the continuous intellectual organic forums which in addition to being a scientific dialectic forum for students is also a bridge to prepare UMM IP students to become reliable political and government observers in public spaces.
For this opening edition, presenting UMM IP students; Hendri as a local political observer, Danang Kurniawan as a public policy observer and Tia Marwah as a regional development observer. In his presentation, Hendri highlighted the urgency of regional elections historically so that they become an electoral model in the regions. The most basic reason is that regional heads who are directly elected provide absolute sovereignty to the community. Danang focuses more on the empirical facts of the implementation of regional elections that have been going on since 2005. Although regional elections are full of various problems such as fraud, money politics, corruption, and others, regional elections still need to be supported by making improvements in the regulatory aspects and actor behavior. While Tia Marwah focuses more on the fact that regional elections often fail to create regional leaders who are able to bring welfare improvement agendas in the community. Corruption of regional heads and poverty that remains high are valid evidence that is shown.
