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The recent arrest of the top leader of the Islamist
Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) on corruption charges is a reminder of the
precarious financial situation that all Indonesian political parties face.
Operating with
limited financial resources, parties may have gotten a little too creative
in raising funds for the likes of the country’s antigraft commission.
PKS president
Luthfi Hasan Ishaaq is the latest in a list of top elected Indonesian
politicians implicated in corruption scandals. Those before him have
included politicians from the Democratic Party of President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono, who ironically enough, was elected in 2004 and again 2009 on an
anticorruption platform.
None of the big
parties are free from corruption scandals. One possible reason is that the
politicians running the parties are often tasked with raising money for the
party’s coffers. Even Golkar — which is the most financially well-endowed
of all Indonesian parties, as it is backed by the diversified Bakrie business
group, with former chairman, Aburizal Bakrie, also sitting as Golkar party
chairman — has not been spared from graft scandals.
With Indonesia
heading into an election in 2014, these parties will likely be scrambling
for more money to finance their campaigns. And as long as the issue of
party finances is not resolved, parties will likely be forced to circumvent
the law in their efforts to come up with the money. They somehow seem to
think that they won’t get caught.
Indonesia has
organized three free and fair elections since the downfall of strongman
Soeharto in 1998. Its multiparty electoral system, however, is costly for
the state to run, and also costly for the various parties to contest. In
1999, 48 parties contested in the election; in 2004, 24 parties; and in
2009, 44. Things were a lot simpler and easier to finance during the 30
years under Soeharto, when only three parties were allowed to run in
elections that were geared to ensure victory for the ruling party.
After 2009,
there was a consensus that Indonesia needed a simpler electoral system. The
House of Representatives has since come up with a new electoral law, but it
is difficult for newcomers to join. The Electoral Commission ruled that
only 10 parties, including nine that already have representation in the
House, qualified to contest in the national polls next year.
But the law
does not address the important question of party financing, an important
element for a democracy to work. It says only that parties can raise money
from members and from individual and corporate donations. While campaign
funds are subject to independent auditing, parties’ finances are not,
except for the pittance of taxpayers’ money that they receive from the
state.
With membership
fees and donations unlikely to cover the huge cost of running a political
party and its secretariat, many politicians have tripped as they used their
power and influence to help raise money for their parties.
The Corruption
Eradication Commission (KPK), an independent state agency which has been
aggressive in going after the corruption within political parties, has
focused its investigation on individual politicians, as if they and they
alone are to blame for the corruption. All court convictions in these
corruption cases have stopped with the individual politicians. Their
respective parties have not only been spared, but are even prepared to
sacrifice the implicated politicians.
Luthfi was
replaced as president of the PKS, the day after he was named a suspect in a
corruption case regarding state procurement of beef imports from Australia.
He has since also lost his seat in the House.
President
Yudhoyono is coming under a lot of pressure from the Democratic Party’s
rank-and-file to remove chairman Anas Urbaningrum, as his name repeatedly
came up in court testimonies over financial scandals involving other party
seniors. They say the president’s reluctance to act is costing the party
its public standing, and may jeopardize the party’s prospects for the 2014
polls.
The party’s
chief treasurer, Muhammad Nazaruddin, has already been sentenced to seven
years (raising the sentence from five) in jail for corruption, and he is
determined not to go down alone. One prominent Democrat politician,
Angelina Sondakh, has already been sentenced, and another, former youth and
sports minister Andi Alfian Mallarangeng, will soon be tried on charges of
corruption over the construction of a huge sports complex near Jakarta.
Five of the six
parties in Yudhoyono’s coalition government have felt the brunt of the KPK.
A Golkar senior
politician was recently named in a court document of profiting from the
government’s procurement of a special Koran; the chairman of the National
Awakening Party (PKB), Muhaimin Iskandar, has been named in several
corruption cases within the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry, which he
heads. Suryadharma Ali, the chairman of the United Development Party (PPP)
and minister of religious affairs, is increasingly under the KPK spotlight
as more cases of massive corruption within the ministry emerge. Agriculture
Minister Suswono, also from the PKS, will now have to answer questioning
about his role in the allocation of a beef imports quota following Lutfhi’s
arrest.
Even the
Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the main opposition party,
has seen many of its top representatives convicted for corruption.
No one can
accuse the KPK of playing favorites, but many are asking why the KPK has
not sought to trace where all the graft money has gone. What happened to
the money that Nazaruddin and Angelina raised? Is it sitting in their bank
accounts, or was it transferred to their party’s treasures? Did they steal
the money for themselves, or were they working to raise money for the
party?
In the end, it
may be just as well that the KPK has not pursued the investigation beyond
the involvement of the individual politicians. The consequences of
revealing the complicity of the political parties may just be too big of a
problem for the nascent democracy to handle.
If the parties
were found guilty of such massive corruption, the court system would be
forced to shut them down. Indonesia may then be left with only a handful
parties in 2014, which is not necessarily good for its democracy either.
Outlawing these parties may raise serious questions about the legitimacy of
the politicians who supported their entering the elections, including
President Yudhoyono himself.
No one warned
Indonesia that running a democracy would be this costly, and this
complicated. ●
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