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week after the official campaign period started, the Election Monitoring Agency (Bawaslu) said it had found many campaign violations across the country, with the Hanura Party as the number-one offender.

Bawaslu commissioner Nelson Simanjuntak said on Wednesday that all 12 political parties participating in the legislative election had committed campaign violations based on reports from Bawaslu'€™s provincial branches and regional branches of the Elections Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu). '€œThere is a total of 287 violations,'€ he told a press conference at Bawaslu'€™s headquarters in Central Jakarta.

Hanura is the worst offender with 48 cases, closely followed by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) with 47 cases and the Nasdem Party with 39 cases, according to Nelson.

The rest of the parties found to have breached campaign regulations are the Golkar Party with 29 cases, the Gerindra Party and the Democratic Party with 23 cases, the National Awakening Party (PKB) with 21 cases, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) with 17 cases, the National Mandate Party (PAN) with 16 cases, the United Development Party (PPP) with 13 cases, the Crescent Star Party (PBB) with nine cases and the Indonesian Justice and Unity Party (PKPI) with two cases.

Nelson said there were 12 types of campaign violation found by Bawaslu, including unregistered campaigners, unreported campaigns, open campaigns that disturbed the traffic, vote buying and so on.

Bawaslu has started clarifying some violation cases perpetrated by political parties and public officials on the campaign trail, despite failing to obtain leave of absence permits.

Nelson said there were four public officials who could be culpable for such violations. They are Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Sharif Cicip Sutardjo, who is also Golkar'€™s deputy chairman, Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali, also chairman of the PPP, Pelalawan Regent H.M. Harris of Golkar and Sumbawa Regent Jamaluddin Malik of the PBB.

Suryadharma was also accused of conducting an illegal campaign at an Islamic boarding school in Malang, East Java. The local Panwaslu branch reported the case, deemed a criminal offense, to the police.

Cicip was alleged to have joined Golkar'€™s campaign during his working visit in Demak, Central Java, on March 16. The case is now still being processed by the local Panwaslu.

Harris and Jamaluddin were alleged to have campaigned in Pelalawan, Riau and Sumbawa, West Nusa Tenggara (NTB), without leave of absence permits.

Bawaslu also found three parties to have exceeded the limit of campaign advertising, in which each party is restricted to a maximum of 10-30 second slots per station per day.

Nelson said Hanura aired campaign ads in 15 spots on Global TV while Golkar had its campaign ads aired on two stations '€” ANTV and Indosiar '€” 15 times and 16 times, respectively. Meanwhile, Nasdem campaign ads were aired 12 times on Metro TV.

Bawaslu had summoned officials from the three parties as well as the TV stations airing the spots, but only officials from Metro TV met the summons on Monday, he added.