Ward Berenschot, KITLV researcher and appointed professor by special appointment of Comparative Political Anthropology of South and Southeast Asia at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), had the honour to give a ‘Parliament’s lecture’ at the Indonesian parliament together with intellectual powerhouse Robertus Robet. The lecture was organised by the Nasdem fraction.

Beforehand Ward was a bit nervous about how his talk would go down, as he was discussing the underbelly of politics, such as vote buying, links with business actors and the need to curtail campaign costs. But thanks to good questions from the audience, vote buying was openly and extensively discussed. While he was not sure if he convinced people that electoral reform could help to stem vote buying, the open and constructive way in which this problem was discussed in parliament felt like a step towards addressing this problem.

The lecture (in Indonesian) was live streamed on Youtube.