With the 2009 legislative election campaign period set to kick off in two-weeks time, the General Elections Commission (KPU) has been urged to immediately issue guidelines for political parties' campaign funds.
A coalition of three prominent watchdogs -- Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW), Transparency International Indonesia (TII) and Centre for Electoral Reform (Cetro) -- said here Tuesday such guidelines were needed to help public accountants audit the in-and-out flows of each party's election campaign funds.
The coalition says the absence of guidelines would hamper the auditing process if parties did not taking the financial reports seriously.
During the 2004 legislative and presidential elections, many parties received more funding than was permissible under government regulations, but it was often unclear who the donors were, ICW political corruption division coordinator Adnan Topan Husodo said.
In the 2004 presidential election, around 30 percent of campaign funds used by all presidential candidates were "unconfirmed", he said.
As the official regulator, KPU needs to specify what items and activities should be included in the format guidelines for campaign financial reports, as well as sanctions for those who violate the guidelines, Indonesian Public Accountants Association (IAPI) secretary-general Sutarjo said.
"If a state enterprise donates money to a political party or a presidential candidate, which is banned, the KPU needs to specify which sanctions can be imposed," he said.
Sutarjo also suggested KPU rule that only accountants can submit financial reports, saying without such a ruling, political parties had often employed incompetent people for the task.
"As a result, the financial reports are often unreadable. Auditors can't understand them," he said.
Another problem in auditing campaign funds is a lack of public accountants.
As regulated in the 2008 Law on Legislative Election, audits should be conducted by public accountants at municipal/regency, provincial and central levels. With 30 political parties assumed to take part in the 2009 election, there could be some 15,000 financial reports of election campaigns to be audited.
According to IAPI chairwoman Tia Adityasih, there are only 800 registered public accountants throughout the country, and almost half are based in Java.
Because of the "auditor crisis" and the 30-day time limit for the auditing process, Tia suggested a consolidation of financial reports at a provincial level, to reduce the amount of paperwork.
