Govt urged to revise political party laws

Govt urged to revise political party laws

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) and the
Indonesian Accountants' Foundation (YAI) urged the government on
Tuesday to revise political party laws to allow party financial
management to be more accessible to public scrutiny.

The laws on political parties and general elections are full
of loopholes that parties can exploit to conceal the true
circumstances from accountants, Donny Ardyanto, ICW's coordinator
for legislative oversight, said at a seminar.

The one-day seminar, in which ICW presented the findings of
its recent survey of party financial management, also featured
Ellya Noorlisyati from YAI and Ramlan Surbakti, the deputy
chairman of the General Elections Commission (KPU).

The seminar discussed Law No. 2/1999 on political parties and
Law No. 3/1999 on elections.

Article 14 (4) of the law on political parties requires
parties to list their donors, with donations received being then
subject to auditing.

"In practice, many donors are not identified on the lists.
They are only identified as, for example, NN (no name), or
"servant of God". This practice hampers the auditing process,"
said Ellya.

Ellya's firm was appointed by the National Election Committee
in 1999 to audit those parties contesting the elections.

Another obstacle faced by the auditors was the absence of
party financial records.

"There are too many unrecorded transactions, and there is no
financial coordination between party headquarters and the
branches. Therefore, the auditors don't have any financial
records to audit. If there are any, they are insufficient" she
said.

Chaotic financial record-keeping was also caused by a lack of
professionalism on the part of treasurers, said the ICW and YAI
assessments.

The treasurer of a political party was also a politician and
not a professional accountant. They lacked financial management
and accounting skills.

"His or her position is more political in nature and is
designed to accommodate the political interests of the party,"
said Donny. "In the future, their recruitment should be based on
professionalism rather than political favor."

The ICW investigation found that between 80 percent and 90
percent of party funding came from businesspeople.

"The independence of the political parties is questionable at
this point ... there could be some sort of patronage between the
political parties and the businessmen," Donny said.

"Since political parties do not verify the origin of the
donations they receive, it is also possible that some of them
could have come from corruption," he added.

For the sake of party independence, ideally party funding
should come from the members instead of from the government and
private donors, the ICW said.

Commenting on the ICW and YAI's opinions, Ramlan Surbakti said
the National Election Committee was working on a revision of the
laws.

"It is expected that this could be passed by the House of
Representatives so that it can be enforced for the 2004
elections," he said.

"We (the KPU) propose (in the bill) that the amount of
donations to and expenses of the political parties be limited and
reported to the KPU," said Ramlan. (06)