L

ess than a month after being sworn in as councilors in Bantul regency for the 2014-2019 term of office, many have produced their letters of appointment as councilors as collateral to get loans from banks.

As of early September, 21 of 45 Bantul councilors have used their letters of appointment as councilors to obtain loans worth around Rp 300 million (US$24,929) each.

'€œUp to now, 21 of the councilors have given their letters to the bank,'€ temporary speaker of the council, Hanung Raharjo, said earlier this month.

With loans of that amount, according to Hanung, the councilors had to pay installments of about Rp 6.7 million a month, excluding a Rp 2.7 million payment to their respective political parties.

This means the total monthly installments they had to pay had reached Rp 9.4 million.

'€œIf their salary is Rp 13 million per month, then they will take home less than Rp 4 million a month,'€ Hanung said.

Mathematically, he added, this would cause a difficult financial situation for the councilors.

Bantul Legislative Council secretary Helmi Jamharis, said he had played only a facilitating role in the administrative requirements for the use of the certificates.

'€œThe decision is in the speaker'€™s hands,'€ Helmi said.

Hanung, however, saw the phenomenon as normal, arguing that the councilors had done so to fulfill their needs.

One councilor, Suradal, said it was understandable that many councilors used their letters of appointment to get loans from banks as they also had to spend a huge amount of money on their campaigns to get elected to office.

'€œI'€™ve counted my social budget allocation and I did not spend much,'€ said Suradal.

He added that even so, he had spent hundreds of millions of rupiah on his campaign.

'€œI don'€™t know how much has been spent by others,'€ he said.

According to reports, some elected Bantul councilors may have spent over Rp 500 million to get elected. Some reportedly even spent up to Rp 1.3 billion.

A culture of pragmatism has been blamed for the high-spending campaign activities of these legislative candidates.

Many allegedly did not hesitate to buy votes to get elected.

Meanwhile, councilors in Makassar say they were targeted by various banks, who offered them loans right after they were inaugurated on Sept. 8.

'€œI have loan offers from seven banks,'€ Wahab Tahir of the Golkar Party faction said as quoted by tribunnews.com on Wednesday.

He said the amount of the loan on offer had varied between Rp 400 million and Rp 1 billion.

'€œMaybe they [the banks] see us as prospective clients as our salary is over Rp 10 million,'€ he said.