T

he Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) has received reports of irregularities during registration for regional head elections slated to be held in December.

According to the committee, reported irregularities include bribery, misuse of regional budgets (APBD) by incumbents, fake diplomas and support from supposedly neutral civil servants for certain candidates.

'€œWe will report the alleged misuse of state money to the Supreme Audit Agency [BPK] and the alleged bribery to the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre [PPATK]. We have reported fingered civil servants to the Home Ministry and the Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Ministry,'€ Bawaslu'€™s Nasrullah said at the agency'€™s headquarters on Monday.

Given strong evidence that a candidate had bought his or her candidacy, Nasrullah said, or spent APBD funds on campaigns, the candidacy would be invalidated and he or she would be removed if incumbent.

'€œSome potential candidates have told us that they decided not to register after being asked for money by political parties,'€ he said on Monday.

Political analyst Sebastian Salang of Indonesian Legislative Watch said that he had canceled his plan to register as a regional head candidate, as he would have had to pay a bribe to a certain political party.

In order to register as a candidate for the regentship of Manggarai, East Nusa Tenggara, he would have had to gain the support of seven seats on the regional council.

Golkar and the National Awakening Party (PKB) had given him six seats without asking for payment, so he needed only one more seat. Salang, who is also an antigraft activist, refused to disclose the name of the party or the sum involved.

Nasrullah said that he would meet Salang to obtain more information.

'€œWe will ask the PPATK to check the bank accounts of the registered candidates, their families, party leaders and executives [to verify the irregularities],'€ he said.

Another political analyst, Effendi Gazali from the University of Indonesia, said that his team had been conducting research into the current regional election process.

'€œAs a preliminary result, from a sample of candidates and potential candidates, we found that 60 to 70 percent had been asked to pay political parties for their support,'€ Effendi told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

Senior Golkar politician Yorrys Raweyai meanwhile insisted his party was clamping down on such practices. '€œWe will bring anyone found to be involved in bribery to court. But we need evidence, not hearsay and gossip,'€ he said.

Bawaslu has also detected the illegal misuse of APBD funds in the campaigns of some incumbent candidates.

'€œAn incumbent of one of the regions of South Sulawesi will be reported to the BPK in one or two days from now for allegedly using APBD funds for his campaign,'€ Nasrullah said.

According to Aulia Andri, Bawaslu'€™s North Sumatra head, a majority of the incumbents in the 23 regencies and municipalities in the province had paid for posters of themselves to be put up on roadsides using state money.

Meanwhile, civil servant partisanship has been reported in Simalungun regency, North Sumatra, where regency secretary Gideon Purba accompanied candidate JR Saragih to registration. Use of fake diplomas has been reported in a number of regions, including Central Sulawesi.

'€œWe will continue to investigate, and continue to get findings in the field,'€ Nasrullah said. (rbk)