The head of the legal team for presidential ticket Prabowo Subianto-Sandiaga Uno, Bambang Widjojanto, said on Friday during the election dispute hearing at the Constitutional Court that the rival camp, incumbent Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, had used state funds and government programs to influence voters.

“[Jokowi] used his position as the president to use the state budget and government programs as an instrument for influencing voters in the 2019 presidential election,” said Bambang.

He said using state funds looked like a legitimate thing to do because it had a legal basis, but after delving into it, they found the practice amounted to a “misuse of the state budget”.

Bambang said Jokowi’s camp could do that easily, because he was the president, thus the “violation” could be done in a structured way, collectively by the “state apparatus”.

One example, he said, was the decision to pay civil servants, military and National Police personnel a 13^th salary in addition to the Idul Fitri holiday allowance and to raise the salary of village and subdistrict officials. He also mentioned the housing facility, including the zero-down payment scheme to buy a house, for National Police members.

“The election violation was conducted systematically using the State Budget Law, complete with the legal basis for each scheme,” he said. (evi)

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