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Regional elections costly, but should they be called off?
Data suggests that the money spent by regional head candidates often far outstrips the income that they will receive once they take office. Home Minister Tito Karnavian and others have suggested that this could be remedied by scrapping direct regional elections.
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Ballot boxes are distributed in preparation for the regional election in Ambon, Maluku, in June 2018. (Antara/izaac mulyawan)
C
entral Sulawesi administration secretary Mohammad Hidayat Lamakarate has said he is optimistic about being able to minimize his outlay in his quest to win the gubernatorial race in November next year.
His optimism, he said, stemmed from the fact that the two parties backing him -- the Golkar Party and the NasDem Party -- have eschewed the infamous endorsement fee often required by political parties.
“For a province like Central Sulawesi, I’ll have to prepare Rp 15 billion [US$1.06 million] to Rp 20 billion,” he told The Jakarta Post on Monday, explaining that the funds would be spent on expenses such as polling and campaigning.
Timbas Tarigan, the two-term deputy mayor of Binjai, North Sumatra, said he spent around Rp 2.5 billion of his personal money over the course of two campaign periods.
“Of course the funds that I disbursed were not as much as the mayoral candidate; maybe that’s also why I did not play a major role as deputy mayor,” he told the Post on Sunday.
The lack of influence he wielded is one of the reasons Timbas is determined to run for mayor next year.
“I have prepared the necessary materials. Of course, I will need more funds [than before] because I need to get the support of a political party to run as a Binjai mayoral candidate,” he said, declining to mention how much money he had raised so far.
