Jakarta – Only a handful of political parties have fulfilled a legal requirement to provide their financial reports upon request, a corruption watchdog group has said.
According to the Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW), the parties holding seats in the House of Representatives that provided it with required financial reports were the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the People's Conscience Party (Hanura) and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS).
The non-compliant parties were identified as the Golkar Party, the National Awakening Party (PKB) and the National Mandate Party (PAN).
Even the compliant parties failed to provide complete reports. "The PKS only gave its report from 2010, while Gerindra submitted a report that is still undergoing an audit," the ICW said in a statement.
ICW representative Apung Widadi said on Thursday that the General Elections Commission (KPU) should require political parties to submit reports when they register for elections to boost compliance instead of only asking them to provide bank account numbers.
"Political parties must publicize their financial reports to their constituents and say what they have done with the money and how that has been beneficial for the public," Apung said.
By law, national parties and their local branches are required to submit financial reports every fiscal year. Those reports must be made public, according to the law, although it provides no sanctions for non-compliance.
The ICW's initial requests for the financial reports in April initially went unheeded by the parties, which prompted the ICW to file a complaint with the Central Information Commission (KIP).
According to Apung, while some parties did audit their finances, auditors only looked at the money provided to parties from the state budget.
"The funds they received from the state budget only makes up less than 10 percent of the parties' income. They must disclose the sources of the bulk of their money," he said.
Political parties have received only meager funding from the state budget. In 2010 for instance, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party received Rp 2.34 billion (US$248,040) of taxpayer funding, while the Golkar Party received Rp 1.62 billion and the PDI-P received Rp 1.57 billion.
Apung said that the government had been too lenient in accommodating political parties. "The parties are always late in delivering their report, but the government continues to earmark funds for them, year after year," Apung said.
Apung called on the commission to use submission of financial reports as a condition for political parties to register for elections.
Separately, KPU commissioner Sigit Pamungkas said that it would be difficult to accommodate the ICW's proposal for the 2014 election, as the verification of parties had already gotten under way.
Sigit also said that there was little the KPU could do sanction non-complaint parties. "Election law only orders political parties to hand over their bank account numbers and not financial reports," Sigit said.
Golkar Party central board member Firman Soebagyo said that the ICW's proposal would only slow down the electoral process. "I'm not saying that publishing the financial report is not important. But it is not in the law. Why should we make it complicated?" Firman said. (nad)