Vote buying rocks Banjarnegara
Agus Maryono, The Jakarta Post, Banjarnegara | Sat, 07/30/2011 8:00 AM
Reports on vote-buying practices at the regional election in Banjarnegara, Central Java, have been filed to the local election monitoring committee (Panwaslu).
The reports revealed the practice in 16 of the regency’s 20 districts.
“Money politics might have occurred in all districts. Yet, only 16 filed reports,” Widi Gunawan of Banjarnegara Panwaslu told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
Widi deplored the situation, saying that it indicated that some of the regional leader candidates had violated their own oath not to commit vote-buying practices during the election.
Banjarnegara held its election last week to elect its regent and deputy.
Four pairs of candidates joined the race that competed to lure votes from around 700,000 eligible voters conducted through the 1,631 polling stations.
The recapitulation on Thursday at the regency election body showed there were 498,931 legitimate votes to count to decide the winner.
Sutejo Slamet Utomo-Hadi Supeno were leading by collecting some 40 percent of the total legitimate votes. Independent candidate pair Budi Sarwono-Kusomo Winahyu took 35 percent of the votes, followed by Syamsudin-Toto Hardono with 21 percent and Yusrie-M Najib with 5 percent.
Widi said all reports on vote-buying practice would be thoroughly handled and followed up according to evidence. Most of the bank notes submitted as evidence were of Rp 10,000 (US$1.18) and Rp 20,000 values.
“The amount is not much but as evidence it is considered strong,” said Widi, adding that the evidence amount totaled Rp 2.5 million .
He also noted that the serial numbers of each note were consecutive.
The modus used, he said, was containing money inside envelopes together with the photos of the respective pair of candidates.
Separately, chairman of the Election Monitoring Agency (Bawaslu), Bambang Eka Cahya Widodo, who joined the monitoring activities of the election in Banjarnegara, also said that the fact the bank notes had consecutive serial numbers was unique.
“We predict that they came from the same source,” said Bambang, urging the local Panwaslu to thoroughly deal with the case, especially because they had money as evidence.
