JAKARTA, KOMPAS — Supervision of the growing political activities ahead of the 2019 elections must be strengthened. In addition to election organizers and law enforcement officials, the people should be involved in checking political activities.Ratna Dewi Pettalolo, a member of the Elections Supervisory Board (Bawaslu), said in Jakarta on Friday that transactional politics were real and such practices threatened democracy in the country.
The arrest of Bowo Sidik Pangarso, a member of Commission VI of the House of Representatives (DPR) over his alleged acceptance of bribes indicates there is a practice of transactional politics. As reported by newspapers, Bowo is again running for a seat at the House representing Central Java in the legislative election in April.
Bowo was arrested by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) in an operation early on Thursday. The KPK confiscated about Rp 8 billion (US$563.000) in cash put in envelopes and stored in 82 boxes during the arrest. The money in Rp 20,000 and Rp 50,000 notes is believed to have been intended for serangan fajar, which literally means “attack at dawn”, a practice of giving money to people to buy their votes on the day of an election.
Ratna said such a politics practice was generally carried out on the eve of voting day through various means, including bank transfers. The community should be actively involved in reining in vote-buying activities, she said. "We will follow up information that comes from the community," said Ratna.
Article 515 of Law Number 7 of 2017 concerning elections states that anyone who gives or promises money to voters can be sentenced for up to three years of imprisonment and a fine of Rp 36 million.Monitoring
The deputy chairperson of the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK), Dian Ediana Rae, said the agency had also actively participated in monitoring the flows of political campaign funds. However, the PPATK is only able to reveal suspicious funds related to the 2019 election after the voting process.
The PPATK findings will then be submitted to the Bawaslu and other authorized parties, such as the KPK and other law enforcement bodies. "Elections must be clean. We help ensure that the funds used and their sources are legal, not the result of criminal acts, be it corruption or money laundering, "said Dian.
Meanwhile, KPK chairman Agus Rahardjo said the KPK also had forged cooperation with Bawaslu related to transactional politics. However, this does not mean giving the KPK the space to crack down on transactional politics committed by electoral candidates. "The police are also involved. I really hope that later [the Bawaslu and National Police] will be more active in carrying out supervision," Agus said.
On Jan. 3, 2018, the National Police announced the establishment of an anti-transactional-politics task force. Bawaslu and KPK officials have met several times to discuss the issue. The KPK has also received various complaints over alleged vote-buying, but the antigraft agency has limited authority to investigate such cases.
Suboptimal performance
Network for Democracy and Electoral Integrity (Netgrit) founder Hadar Nafis Gumay said the performance of the Bawaslu as the election supervisor was still below expectations. Preventative efforts against transactional politics by the Bawaslu were ineffective, he added.
"The Bawaslu must actively inform and remind election participants and voters to avoid vote-buying. The mechanism for handling cases must also be more effective," he said.
He said involving the public in reporting alleged vote-buying practices was hard to achieve. The reports could not be followed up immediately. The community\'s permissive attitude toward vote-buying by legislative candidates also made it difficult to eradicate such practices.
"It\'s not easy to overcome transactional politics. The community must be continuously told that vote-buying is a poison and damages democracy, so that they no longer underestimate the impact of vote-buying," Hadar said. (IAN/E21/SPW/MTK)