[In the past month, other
P.K.S. leaders have been implicated in the case, accused of orchestrating a
payoff of more than $1 million intended for the party’s 2014 legislative
election campaign. Among them is Agriculture Minister Suswono, whose ministry
allocates quotas to beef-import companies and who has been questioned by the
independent Corruption Eradication Commission.]
By Joe Cochrane
 |
| A Google Image |
JAKARTA — Fifteen years
ago, Indonesia took its
first step toward democracy with the ouster of Suharto, the late authoritarian
president. By the 2009 national elections, the country had one of the most open
electoral systems in Asia, with direct ballots for president all the way down
to district chiefs and mayors.
Political parties and
elections cost money, however, especially in a sprawling archipelago nation of
240 million. As Indonesia’s democratic governance expanded, so did the need for
airplane flights to rallies, local party offices, advertising, pollsters and
consultants — not to mention the box lunches and T-shirts that are expected by
the masses who turn up at campaign events.
But the country’s
campaign-finance laws have not kept up with these changes, analysts say. As a
result, Indonesian political parties are increasingly financing their
operations through the same official corruption that symbolized the Suharto
era.
“That’s not a secret
anymore,” said T. Mulya Lubis, chairman of the executive board of Transparency International Indonesia. “It’s
public knowledge. This is the biggest kind of corruption now.”
The most recent in a
series of political scandals involves the Islamic-based Prosperous Justice
Party, or P.K.S., the fourth-largest party in the House of Representatives and
a member of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s governing coalition. The party
has been under fire since its chairman was arrested in January over allegations
of accepting bribes in exchange for securing additional government quotas for a
company that imports beef.
In the past month, other
P.K.S. leaders have been implicated in the case, accused of orchestrating a
payoff of more than $1 million intended for the party’s 2014 legislative
election campaign. Among them is Agriculture Minister Suswono, whose ministry
allocates quotas to beef-import companies and who has been questioned by the
independent Corruption Eradication Commission.
Separately, a corruption
suspect has asserted that the P.K.S. planned to exploit its control of the
ministries of Agriculture, Communications and Information Technology, and
Social Affairs to amass a campaign war chest of 2 trillion rupiah, or $204
million. P.K.S. officials have denied those allegations as well as any party
involvement in corruption.
Yet the scandal, dubbed
“Beef-gate,” has prompted calls for Mr. Yudhoyono’s government and the
legislature to enact sweeping campaign-finance overhauls before national
elections next year. Proposals include public disclosure of political parties’
expenditures and sources of income, limits on campaign spending, creating a new
agency or reappointing the National Election Commission to exercise oversight,
and prosecuting party officials for violations.
Titi Anggraeni,
executive director of the Association for
Elections and Democracy, a nongovernmental organization, said that
current law requires that parties disclose donations, income and expenditures
only in a single report endorsed by their own auditor, rather than make public
their actual accounts. As a result, she said, it is easy to hide illegal
contributions and income and the spending that results from both.
“We have free and fair
elections in Indonesia, but not free and fair competition,” she said.
“Candidates use money as a shortcut to win elections.”
Under current law,
political parties may collect revenue only from member dues, capped donations
from individuals and companies, and state subsidies for winning seats in the
national and provincial legislatures.
However, Ms. Anggraeni
said her organization’s research found that these forms of legal income cover
less than 15 percent of operating expenses for political parties, which, for
example, must maintain offices in all 34 of Indonesia’s provinces and in
two-thirds of its 491 incorporated provincial districts in order to compete in
elections.
“It’s not in the
Indonesian culture for persons or companies to make political contributions,
because people don’t trust political parties,” she said. “This creates a
situation where political parties seek illegal funds.”
Effendi Gonzali, a political
analyst at the University of Indonesia,
said that most illegal funds flowing into political party coffers are generated
through the House of Representatives’ Budget Commission, whose members have
extraordinary oversight, all the way down to line-item expenditures.
“They have very close
ties with ministries and other state institutions, so they ‘cook’ the budgets
of ministries and state institutions handled by ministers from coalition
parties, and they also manage to get a kickback,” he said.
On Tuesday, a former
senior National Police officer testified in court that the Budget Commission
received four boxes of cash in 2010 from a police general arrested last
December in connection with a $20 million equipment procurement scandal,
according to local news reports.
In the past five years,
dozens of current and former members of the national legislature have been
convicted on corruption charges, including Muhammad Nazaruddin, the former
treasurer of Mr. Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party. Mr. Muhammad was convicted of
corruption and bribery last year for helping to rig tenders to build an
athletes village for the 2011 Southeast Asian Games, which Indonesia hosted. In
January, Angelina Sondakh, a former Miss Indonesia and Democratic Party
lawmaker, was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for receiving
kickbacks in the same case.
Mr. Muhammad asserted
that Anas Urbaningrum, the Democratic Party chairman, had ordered him and other
party legislators to rig the bidding to build a multimillion-dollar national
sports complex in West Java Province. Mr. Urbaningrum resigned in February.
Last November, Dipo
Alam, Mr. Yudhoyono’s cabinet secretary, reported three ministries to the
Corruption Eradication Commission, including the Agriculture Ministry, for
alleged graft involving collusion among senior government officials and
national lawmakers. Andi Mallarangeng, from Mr. Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party,
resigned as youth and sports minister in December after being declared a suspect
in the sports complex scandal, while three other ministers including Mr.
Suswono have been linked to graft cases but remain in their jobs.
In March, investigators
from the Corruption Eradication Commission raided the offices of two national
lawmakers from Golkar, Indonesia’s largest political party, including one
belonging to its party treasurer, in connection with suspected corruption
involving the construction of sports facilities for Indonesia’s 2012 National
Games.
Analysts have been
predicting a spike in illegal political financing before hotly contested
legislative and presidential elections set for next year.
“The problem is, if
there isn’t a good political party financing system, you’ll have political
parties focusing on getting money rather than focusing on representing
constituents or pursuing ideas that they can present as alternatives,” said W.
Paul Rowland, a Jakarta-based associate with the Center for Democratic Institutions at
Australian National University.
“The legal risk of being
a political party treasurer is huge,” Mr. Rowland said. “If you look at the
number of investigations against political party treasurers by the
anti-corruption commission, you can certainly draw some conclusions. There’s
certainly a connection between political parties, the positions they hold in
ministries and these corruption cases.”
The other problem is
that many of Indonesia’s 10 largest political parties have a wealthy patron or
group of patrons who bankroll some operational expenses and campaigns in
exchange for either being the chairperson or being able to exercise influence
on legislation and government policies, according to analysts.
On Monday, Hajriyanto Y.
Thohari, deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, proposed that the
government allocate up to 16 trillion rupiah a year for political parties to
diversify their funding sources.
Marcus Mietzner, a
senior lecturer at Australian National University and author of a forthcoming
book on party and campaign financing in Indonesia, said that dramatically
increasing public funding for political parties is a critical part of any
overhaul effort.
In 2005, annual state
funding for political parties was reduced from 1,000 rupiah per vote won in
national, provincial and district legislatures in the previous election to 21
million rupiah for each seat won — which decreased total funding about 90
percent, Mr. Mietzner said. In 2009, the amount was further reduced to 108
rupiah a year for each vote won.
Mr. Mietzner said that
in Turkey, which has a population of 75 million, political parties received the
equivalent of $175 million from the state after the 2011 election for their
operations, compared with the equivalent of $1 million for Indonesian parties
that year, based on their 2009 poll results.
“You can’t really have
credible reform without a significant increase in state subsidies,” Mr.
Mietzner said. “Party membership is collapsing around the world, including in
developed countries. As a result, most new and consolidated democracies offer
state subsidies for parties, which usually cover 25 to 30 percent of total
party expenditure. In Indonesia, it’s now probably 0.01 percent. The amount of
state subsidies to parties is absolutely minimal.”
