Jakarta, Election Supervisory Board - Chairman of the Election Supervisory Board o fthe republic of Indonesia, Nelson Simanjuntak, stressed the importance of strengthening the Election Supervisory Committee in response to movements of incumbent regional head candidates in the simultaneous election for local leaders on December 9. Data from a number of election monitoring institutions showed the opportunities of the utilization of local budget by a number of incumbent candidates to smoothen their steps in the context of the local democratic party.
So far, said Nelson, the Election Supervisory Committee was weak in carrying out its duties due to the incompetence of Human Resources (HR). He promised to carry out checks directly to South Tangerang Municipality in response to the poor supervision of the Election Supervisory Committee against the incumbent candidates.
"We will check South Tangerang Municipality, incumbent candidates tend to abuse authority," said Nelson in a discussion titled Dynamics of Data of Head of Region Incumbents and Their Influence in Election 2015, on Monday (19/10).
The importance of strengthening the function of Election Supervisory Committee referred to the findings of Forum Indonesia untuk Transparansi Anggaran (Fitra) which called that there was a huge potential of the utilization of local budget by the incumbent candidates before the simultaneous election for local leaders in 2015. The politicization of budget allegedly took place systematically through the mechanism of budgetary changes in the local level.
"This Revised Local Budget has become the entrance to increase populist budget. There is a certain increase in some regions and this becomes a serious indication that it is manipulated by the incumbent candidates," said Coordinator of Advocacy and Investigation department of Fitra, Apung Widadi.
According to him, the utilization of budget had the full support of the Parliament element. That's where the alleged budged politicization was designed systematically. Apung concerned about the phenomenon where the incumbent candidates manipulated the budget, despite having voiced since 10 years ago. "This is because there is no control and improvement," said Apung.
Researchers from the Perkumpulan untuk Pemilu dan Demokrasi (Perludem) Usep Hasan Sadikin said that based on data collected from the Election Commission, there are 278 incumbent candidates competing in the simultaneous election for local leaders in 2015. He acknowledged that there is a pattern designed to smoothen the incumbent’s steps to smooth to win the election. "Incumbent head of the region tends to expedite the election budget," he said.
Member of Satgas Lawan Politik (Sapu) South Tangerang, M Ibnu Novit Neang said that the simultaneous election for local leaders needed to be financed by the state budget. Because the practice of politicizing the budget and other methods by facilitating the allocation of election financing occurred in the South Tangerang.
For example, there was an increase of about 200 percent, or approximately Rp 75 billion related to the grants of social assistance to take advantage of the momentum of Revised Local Budget. According to Ibnu, it reflected the lack of good planning if it was connected with the approaching election schedule.
He suspected that the increase was an attempt to raise the popularity of the incumbent to re-compete as a candidate for mayor of South Tangerang. This opinion is strengthened by the indication that the Election Supervisory Committee is not neutral. "Many indications show that the Election Supervisory Committee is not neutral on behalf of the incumbent, but this is often countered by the Election Supervisory Committee. We then take it to Election Supervisory Board, and they say that there is no violation of the code of ethics," said Ibnu.
Author : News Contributor of Election Supervisory Board | HS
Photo : Hendru Wijaya
Editor : Falcao Silaban