When representation fails: social media criticism of political parties supporting indirect elections in Indonesia

This research aims to analyze how public sentiment on social media X toward political parties that support indirect regional elections in Indonesia. In this study, a qualitative method is used, specifically data from social media X with 8 hashtags, collected from December 1, 2025, to January 27, 2026. The findings of this study indicate that sentiment is highly critical, reflecting near-consensus rejection of shifting local elections from direct voting by citizens to mediation by the regional parliament. Narratively, this discourse is framed in procedural terms that emphasize voter sovereignty, depicting direct elections as democratically legitimate and indirect mechanisms as an erosion of that legitimacy. This illustrates that public perception on social media is negative toward political parties that support indirect regional elections, because the public desires the opposite. Therefore, this research argues that political parties supporting indirect regional elections are not in line with the public's desire for direct regional elections. This illustrates the paradox that political party institutions are not in line with the society they are supposed to represent in a democratic system. Based on this, the implications of this research indicate that the sustainability of democracy does not only depend on institutional design but also on the ability of political parties to remain responsive to the preferences of the society they represent. The discrepancy between the positions of political parties and public aspirations has the potential to weaken representative legitimacy and reduce public trust in democratic institutions.