Mengukur Keterwakilan Politik Remaja: Refleksi Atas Kasus Yogyakarta

Abstract

Political representation is reflected in statement, taking side, symbolization, and action carried out by political actors on behalf of constituents’ interests, a kind of political aid/support, in the process of public policy making. The topic of political representation covers five components, namely, the context, who are represented, what are represented, those who represent, and the strategy used to optimalized the political representation. These five components are the focus of the analysis of the article on the case of Youth Forum of Yogyakarta and its patron PKBI of Yogyakarta. The context is the local democracy, regional autonomy, special status of Yogyakarta, and its impacts to the position of the youth; those who are represented are 14% of Yogyakarta’s population at the age of 15-24 years old which totalled 3.225.400 persons in 2009 who are at the beginning phase of political counssiousness formation; things represented are opinions, aspirations, perspectives, outlooks, interests/needs of the youth as reflected in policy products; those who represent are the local parliament institution, members of local parliament as reflected in political attitudes and actions of delegates and trustees, five political paries with majority votes in local parliament as reflected in their platforms, attitudes, and actions of their provincial branches’ leadership, and other actors such as NGO’s, mass media, etc; and the strategy used to guarantee the optimalization of political representation carried out through the actions of peer educator and peer delegator in forms of strengthening the capacity to self organization and collective actions.