Anita Rachman – Officials at regional branches of Indonesia's main electoral watchdog are struggling to perform their monitoring duties because of difficulties in obtaining operational funds from local governments, a report issued by the organization said on Monday.
The Election Supervisory Board (Bawaslu) this year formulated 876 local election supervisory committees (Panwaslu) to work on elections in 237 districts and municipalities across seven provinces.
However, many of them could not work effectively because they did not receive their operational funds as they should have, the report said. Some had to use their own money, with some even going into debt to finance their monitoring activities.
Bawaslu member Agustiani Tio Fridelina Sitorus said the problem was in the fact that the local election supervisory committees had to derive their funds from the local budget.
Local governments, which may not be keen on being monitored, were intentionally late in the disbursement of funds, she said. If they were distributed, they were often withheld until the last minute, she added.
Another Bawaslu member, Wahidah Suaib, said the organization believed that local governments deliberately held on to the funds to hamper Bawaslu's work.
She cited a regional election in West Halmahera district, where only Rp 1.2 billion ($133,000) of the allocated Rp 3 billion in supervisory funds were disbursed before the campaign period, with another Rp 250 million released on the eve of election day.
"Can you imagine the budget arriving only a day prior to election day? The supervisors need the money to conduct evaluations in the period leading up to the elections, especially in the geographically challenging areas of West Halmahera," Wahidah said.
"How can they conduct tight supervision with limited funds?" she added. The practice was not restricted to poor regions of the country, Wahidah said.
The watchdog also noted that problems in budget disbursement were mostly found in areas where the incumbent – was running for his or her second term. The report stated that Panwaslu members believed they were being intentionally weakened by the budgetary constraints so that they would not be able to supervise elections.
Bawaslu chairman Nur Hidayat Sardini said the budget for Panwaslu in regional elections differed between regions but was clearly less than what was allocated for monitoring legislative and presidential elections.
In Melawai district, West Kalimantan, Rp 100 million was set aside for supervision of the local district elections, he said. "For the presidential elections they allocate up to Rp 1 billion," he explained.
Nur said the only solution to the problem was a revision of the law on election organizers, shifting the burden of budget allocation for electoral supervision from local governments to the central government.
While waiting for the House of Representatives to deliberate the bill, Bawaslu will talk to leaders in the regions, including governors, mayors and district heads, and push them for a more timely distribution of operational funds, Nur said.
"We will also talk to the [Regional] Legislative Councils. They should understand that supervision is very important," he said.