Editorial: Jail terms for candidates

Wed, 10/08/2008 10:34 AM  |  Opinion

When the late Nurcholish Madjid wanted to run for president in 1998, he was asked by Golkar politicians if he had enough "nutrition". Baffled, the revered Muslim intellectual learned that nutrition, or gizi, means money in local political jargon.

The poor scholar, who did not have money to the tune expected by the politicians, was promptly dropped from the presidential race.

This shows that money politics was so entrenched during the New Order regime that it was business as usual for politicians even after Soeharto -- that Golkar godfather who ruled the country for 32 years -- had been brought to his knees by the so-called political reform.

Unfortunately, the money politics that glittered yesterday still glitters today.

How brightly it glitters one can gauge from a special committee at the House of Representatives that is currently deliberating a presidential election bill.

The argument behind the drafting of the bill, designed to promote transparency in the presidential election, sounds convincing. The House committee has also agreed on prison terms for candidates who fail to report their campaign funding.

Two other clauses in the bill agreed upon by the committee impose strict penalties on presidential "dropouts".

Presidential candidates will be jailed for between 12 and 48 months should they fail to report their campaign funding and donations. They will also have to pay a fine three times the amount of money they have received.

So far so good, as far as the sound goes.

However, one needs only to look at the 2004 presidential election. Once the election was over, who cared about corruption in the flow of funding to then presidential candidates?

Too often we produce ideas that look good on paper. When it comes to drafting a bill or creating a great concept, we are the champions. Come implementation, we are likely to stall. One conspicuous example is our fight against corruption.

Our anti-corruption law is more than adequate and yet the crime goes on unabated. The law's implementation does not live up to our expectations. If anything, the crime is spreading far and wide, gaining more adherents spread throughout the archipelago, in contrast to the days pre-1998 when the crime tended to amass around former president Soeharto.

Now the egregious part of the bill.

Presidential or vice presidential candidates -- and for that matter, leaders of a political party or leaders of a group of political parties -- who quit the race before the first round of voting will face prison terms of between 24 months and 60 months and be fined somewhere between Rp 25 billion (US$2.5 million) and Rp 50 billion.

If they quit the race after the first round, a harsher punishment of 36 to 72 months' imprisonment and a fine of Rp 50 billion to Rp 100 billion awaits them.

This part of the bill hits a sour note.

First, unlike in mature democracies where public scrutiny of candidates' track record is often merciless, a candidate dropping out of a presidential race in Indonesia is unheard of.

Second, candidates should preserve the right to drop out, which they may do for a variety of reasons. They may decide to drop out because they see little chance of winning the race.

Third, the severe punishment smacks of horse trading to win the interests of big political parties as the bill, when it is passed into law, will effectively screen out candidates from small political parties.

At least two other clauses in the bill are under scrutiny pending its deadline at the end of this month.

One deals with requirements for candidacy for political parties or a group of political parties and the other concerns whether or not the president- and vice president-elect are eligible to hold leadership of a political party.

Already, lawmakers are divided.

Only members of two factions, those of the Golkar Party and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), proposed rigorous tests for presidential candidates and the possibility of a president or vice president leading a political party at the same time.

When politicians fall into the trap of shoddy political deals they tend to be confined to the short-term interests of their political parties. As such they fail to think and behave like statesmen where the interest of their country is at stake.

To let our politicians go beyond the short-term political interests of their political parties is the hardest part of our task today.

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