Markus Junianto Sihaloho & Ezra Sihite – Even as four major bones of contention remain undecided in the discussion over the draft elections law, two new issues have arisen: limiting campaign spending and ensuring a quota of female legislative candidates.
Nurul Arifin, a member of the special committee charged with deliberations over the draft, explained the proposed limits.
"For candidates in regional legislative elections, individual personal donations will be limited to Rp 250 million ($28,000), and group or corporate donations may not exceed Rp 500 million," Nurul said on Wednesday.
He added that the limits for national legislature candidates would be Rp 1 billion for individual donations and 5 billion for corporations or organizations.
Another key issue Nurul highlighted in relation to donations was preventing foreign influence in the electoral process.
"The Prosperous Justice Party [PKS] is firm in its determination that foreign interests may not be permitted to be directly involved in the context of elections," he said of his party's position.
Nurul went on to explain that "foreign parties" included the governments of other nations, foreign companies or local companies with majority foreign share ownership, overseas NGOs or community organizations and foreign citizens.
Speaking on behalf of the government, Home Affairs Minister Gamawan Fauzi said that a spending limit would be a valuable addition to the elections law. "The government agrees. We need that," the minister said at the legislature on Wednes day.
He added that the government preferred a spending limit rather than a campaign finance limit as the latter would be difficult to monitor accurately.
"If finance is monitored, it will be difficult because the money isn't from [the candidate]," he said after testifying before House of Representatives Commission II, which oversees home affairs. Campaign spending would include, among other expenses, materials such as banners, posters and stickers.
"In principle, the government agrees that elections shouldn't have the connotation of being expensive. It shouldn't seem prohibitively expensive to become a member of the House of Representatives," Gamawan said.
Aside from saying it would be considered, lawmakers made little reference on Wednesday to a female candidate quota.
Previous moves toward affirmative action to boost the number of female lawmakers had been based on requiring parties to give a third of votes received to female candidates, regardless of their individual popularity with electors.
The Constitutional Court ruled prior to the 2009 elections, however, that candidates in general elections receiving the most votes were entitled to legislative seats, regardless of gender. It is not known what mechanism is under consideration by lawmakers that could potentially sidestep the Constitutional Court's ruling.
The other four contentious issues already referred to the special committee were those of the electoral threshold, the number of seats per electoral division, vote counting methodology and whether ballot papers would be candidate-based or party-based.