In my opinion, building substantial democracy starts from the upstream, which is political parties. Through well-established political parties, reliable political leaders and representatives who can be trusted to carry out the people's mandate will be elected. When the input from political parties is of high quality, and political parties consistently implement political education, it will result in well-managed and established party governance. In this upstream part, I believe, lies the determinant of what kind of political parties will be formed. The failure of a political party to carry out political education in the upstream will, in turn, affect the middle part of the party's governance and eventually lead to party pathology in the downstream, such as money politics, corruption, and the dysfunction of the party. Especially when party pathology extends from upstream to downstream, it becomes very difficult to cure. Therefore, political awareness through political education from upstream to downstream for every stakeholder is a necessity. Finally, we all hope that democracy in this country is the real democracy, a high-quality democracy, not just a democracy of popularity.
*Dr. Tri Sulistyaningsih, M.Si.
(Editorial Advisor)
