Carlos Paath – A democracy watchdog has called into question the government's approval of a Rp 100 billion ($8.3 million) budget allocation for security measures by the military for next year's elections, saying such matters should be handled by the police, a civilian security force.

"The TNI [Indonesian Military] can indeed be involved in helping safeguard elections, but only at the request of the National Police," Said Salahuddin, coordinator of the People's Synergy for Democracy in Indonesia (Sigma), said in Jakarta on Monday.

"So the security funds for the elections should be under the police, not distributed to different institutions. That way it will be easier to control."

He added that distributing funds to multiple institutions ahead of the elections could open the door to the money being embezzled or misused. "We appreciate the military's involvement in securing the general elections. But that doesn't mean we have to spend public money on it," he said.

The budget allocation was confirmed last Friday by Mahfudz Siddiq, the chairman of the House of Representatives' Commission I, which oversees security and defense affairs.

However, Mahfudz said the budget still had to get final approval from the Finance Ministry because it fell outside the Rp 83 trillion budget allocated to the Defense Ministry for next year.

The National Police have proposed a Rp 3.5 trillion budget to secure the elections, an amount that Indonesia Police Watch, a nongovernmental organization, has backed as realistic.

"Looking at the range of tasks for the police and the size of the population, the Rp 3.5 trillion budget is not too big," IPW chairman Neta S. Pane said on Monday as quoted by Sindonews.com. He cautioned that with such a huge sum, there would need to be stringent oversight to ensure it was spent properly.