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)