Parties find new gold mine with selection fees

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The nomination of legislative candidates by the country's political parties is not only undemocratic but also discriminatory due to the high "fees" charged by the parties to the aspirants, non governmental organizations (NGOs) said on Friday.

The Center for Electoral Reform (Cetro) and Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) urged the General Elections Commission (KPU) to issue a ruling to ban such charges.

"The KPU must strictly ban such fees as otherwise there is no doubt that the parties will continue to impose them," Cetro executive director Smita Notosusanto told a press conference.

"This means that the political parties are failing to collect dues from their members and are encouraging money politics," Todung Mulya Lubis, the founder of Cetro, said.

ICW coordinator Teten Masduki and Cetro deputy director Hadar Nafis Gumay also spoke at the press conference.

The Independent Committee for Election Monitoring (KIPP) has alleged that some political parties are charging legislative hopefuls what they euphemistically term administrative fees" of up to Rp 16 million (US$1,900). The KIPP said Golkar was charging candidates between Rp 200 million and Rp 300 million to get a position near the top of the lists for provincial legislative councils.

The KPU, however, rejected Cetro's request, saying that such charges could be imposed on all party members and might not influence the nomination of legislative candidates.

"The question of charges for legislative candidates is a gray area. We cannot ban these charges as they could be categorized as donations to the parties, which is already dealt with by Law No 12/2003 on elections," KPU deputy chairman Ramlan Surbakti said.

He added that the KPU would punish both the donor and recipient if a donation to a party exceeded the maximum limit of Rp 200 million per person and Rp 800 million per corporation in one year.

Besides questioning the charging of fees for legislative candidates, Cetro and ICW also said that scoring systems use to select legislative candidates, which involved only party leaderships, were opaque and lacked objectivity.

"The scoring system and the results of the selection process for legislative candidates must be open to criticism by other party members, and must be made known to the public," Smita said.

The dominant role played by party leaders in selecting legislative candidates would only serve to discriminate against women candidates as party leaders were mainly men. Thus, they would not select women as legislative candidates, she said.

Meanwhile, Hadar said the KPU should require parties to make public the mechanisms used to select their legislative candidates, and those who attended meetings to ensure that the selection process was democratic and transparent.

He added that the KPU should be able to check directly with the political parties as to whether or not the mechanisms for selecting legislative candidates were democratic and transparent.

The KPU should also publish temporary lists of legislative candidates to permit public scrutiny before the drawing up of the final lists.

Ramlan once again rejected Hadar's request.

"The request is fine, but would be very difficult to implement. Imagine if we had to check 40 parties at all levels within a short space of time. It would be very difficult to do," Ramlan told reporters.

Therefore, the KPU had decided not to standardize the mechanisms for the selecting of legislative candidates, but had rather chosen to oblige the political parties to submit statements to the effect that the aspirants had been selected through democratic and transparent mechanisms.

"These statements are signed by the party chairman and secretary. Thus, if a legislative candidate believes the selection process is not democratic, he must file his complaint with the party instead of the KPU," he said.