Jakarta – There are fears the 2009 general and presidential elections will not come off smoothly due to lack of preparation.
A member of the 2004 General Election Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu), Topo Santoso, said here Friday the government was not ready for campaigning for the legislative election, scheduled to begin in July.
"The election campaign is just around the corner, but until today the government has not completely set up supervisory committees at provincial to district levels across the country. Campaigning should be monitored from the day it starts," he told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of a roundtable discussion hosted by Partnership for Governance Reform in Indonesia.
"The existence of these committees is very important. They will monitor the implementation of the election process, file reports on any violations and solve problems during the elections.
"So far, the government has only established the General Elections Supervisory Board (Bawaslu). Unfortunately, the board can't do its job well because of lack of support from the government, which should have provided the budget and infrastructure. I see the government has been slow to disburse the budget," he said.
The government has allocated Rp 6.667 trillion (US$721 million) to finance the 2009 elections. The money will be used to establish local poll commissions and to purchase elections materials.
In the first quarter of 2008, the Finance Ministry provided Rp 126 billion to set up the Bawaslu and local poll commissions from provincial to district levels. On Wednesday it disbursed another Rp 2.9 trillion for this purpose.
Topo warned election campaigning would run into problems due to the absence of supervisory committees. "The government has taken a step backward compared to the 2004 presidential election," he said.
Kusnanto Anggoro of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies agreed with Topo.
"Let's not put high hopes on the upcoming presidential election. I'm not sure the 2009 elections will bring a better democracy for this country than the previous one. There are still many loopholes in the election law and policies," he said.
A legal expert from Yogyakarta's Gadjah Mada University, Denny Indrayana, said the enforcement of the 2008 law on legislative elections remained poor. He also said the campaign spending of all political parties should be audited.
"During the previous legislative and presidential elections, many parties received more donations than permissible under government regulations, but it was often unclear who the donors were," Denny said.
"So, auditing campaign budgets is necessary. Besides that, the government should impose sanctions on parties that violate the law," he said. (trw)