Camelia Pasandaran & Muninggar Sri Saraswati – The General Elections Commission was facing growing calls on Monday to order a complete re-audit of presidential campaign donations following allegations made in a controversial book that funds from the Rp 6.7 trillion ($717 million) bailout of PT Bank Century found their way into the campaign coffers of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
"The KPU [General Elections Commission] and the Bawaslu [Elections Supervisory Board] must order the new audit and make the results public. The results of the previous audit are no longer trustworthy," Muchtar Sindang, secretary general of the Independent Election Monitoring Committee (KIPP), said on Monday.
Written by sociologist and former journalist George Junus Aditjondro, the newly launched book – called "Unraveling the Cikeas Octopus: Behind the Bank Century Scandal" – accuses Yudhoyono's Democratic Party of using nonprofit foundations associated with the president and his wife, Ani Yudhoyono, to channel illegal funds into his campaign. The book also claims that state funds used to bail out Bank Century were diverted to one of the foundations.
Yudhoyono's spokesman has said he is concerned about inaccuracies in the book.
The Union of Indonesian Constituents (Sakti), a civil society organization, called on the KPU to publicly address the allegations. Sakti chairperson Standarkiaa criticized the KPU over what it said was its inability to detect the use of illegal funds to finance the presidential campaign.
"The law forbids candidates from receiving donations via criminal activities, including money laundering," Standarkiaa said. "Presidential candidates who received illegal funds could be sentenced to four years in jail."
The KPU failed to publicly declare on its Web site specific details about donations made to political parties even though independent auditors submitted detailed reports – including the amount donated by each individual or foundation – to the KPU.
The information available on the KPU Web site is limited to the amount of money donated to each party, how much was used and how much was left.
"As [information on the Web site] may be incomplete, we are going to evaluate and consider what can be published on the web site," KPU member I Gusti Putu Artha said on Monday. "The principle of elections is transparency. We will clarify these allegations to the public."
It has also been claimed that the KPU received part of the bailout funds. Putu denied the allegations.
Bawaslu has previously reported candidates to the police over allegations of campaign-finance irregularities. On Sep. 18, it reported the campaign teams of Yudhoyono, former Vice President Jusuf Kalla and former President Megawati Sukarnoputri.
Bawaslu reported Djoko Suyanto, currently the coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs, who, as the deputy chairman of Yudhoyono's campaign team, signed off the campaign-finance report. Bawaslu claimed that a Rp 3 billion donation had been received by the party from PT Bank Tabungan Pensiunan Nasional, which has overseas shareholders.
The campaign-finance report said the donations were made by two separate companies owned solely by Indonesians. Djoko has dismissed the accusations.
Bawaslu also found other donations made to Yudhoyono's campaign team that could not be clarified. Police dropped the cases over a technicality.
Wahidah Suaib, a Bawaslu member, said the police may not be interested in investigating because the case was technically considered to have "expired" as the elections ended months ago.
Moreover, Bawaslu "cannot do much," she claimed, as "our mandate is to monitor campaign funds as reported by each election participant only."