T

he House of Representatives budget committee has proposed a Rp 3.9 trillion (US$255.4 million) allocation in the 2019 state budget to pay for the salaries of election monitors for the 2019 general election. The expenses have to date been covered by participating political parties.

The Golkar Party initiated the proposal that was eventually propounded by House Commission II overseeing home affairs. The commission also suggested that the funds should later be managed by the Elections Supervisory Agency to avoid potential misuse by political parties.

“We [the budget commission] will discuss it and seek input from all factions during the deliberation of the 2019 state budget,” House budget commission and Golkar lawmaker Aziz Syamsuddin said recently.

To date, participating political parties cover the salaries of monitors they deploy to polling stations on voting day. Based on information gathered from several parties, in the 2014 election, each political party spent an average of Rp 600 billion to cover the expenses.

Most factions supported the proposal, saying that it would lead to a “fair game” and even improve transparency because, in the end, all monitors would receive the same amount of money.

Commission II chairman Zainuddin Amali claimed that many legislative candidates tend to give a substantial amount of money to monitors to “secure their votes”.

However, Amali emphasized that the House would first consider the government’s financial capacity before passing the proposal. “If the government says it can’t afford it, then we’ll accept that,” he said.

Supporting the proposal, National Awakening Party (PKB) lawmaker Abdul Kadir Karding reasoned that not all political parties had sufficient funds to pay for monitors given the high cost of campaigning and other political activities.

Each party should deploy at least two monitors per station, with around 800,000 polling stations erected across the country on voting day. In 2019, 16 political parties are set to contest the legislative election.

“We pay an average Rp 200,000 per monitor. Can you see how much a party will spend just to pay the monitors?” Karding said.

The NasDem Party, however, objected to the proposal, saying that paying the monitors was the responsibility of each political party.

The Indonesian Parliament Watch (Formappi) criticized the proposal, saying that lawmakers had been inconsistent on their stance regarding the matter.

Debates over which main party should bear the responsibility to cover such expenses have emerged since the deliberation of the 2017 Election Law in 2016. At the time, the House and the government agreed that each participating political party should bear the responsibility.

“The parties should calculate how much money they will need. If they were well prepared, they wouldn’t come up with such a proposal,” Formappi researcher Lucius Karus told The Jakarta Post.