Elections and security Adrianus Meliala  ;  A Professor of Criminology at the University of Indonesia,  A Member of the National Police Commission

JAKARTA POST,  16 Januari 2014

                                                                                                                        

With the general elections approaching, financing security personnel has emerged as a hot issue that the government unfortunately seems to slow in responding to. Due to a budget shortfall, the police are now struggling to find other resources to cover the costs of deploying the personnel it needs to secure the elections throughout Indonesia from mid-March until a week after the presidential inauguration in October. The National Police asked the Finance Ministry for Rp 3.7 trillion (US$308 million) to support its nearly year-long election security operations, but the government approved only Rp 1 trillion and the money is ready for disbursement. As a comparison, the government allocated Rp 1.7 trillion to support the police’s operations to maintain security surrounding the 2009 elections. The Indonesian Military (TNI) is not as lucky as the police. TNI commander Gen. Moeldoko said the armed forces needed at least Rp 300 billion to back up the police, but only requested Rp 100 billion. As a result, however, the armed forces have received nothing. It is difficult to conclude that the government and the House of Representatives, which deliberated the budget for the 2014 legislative and presidential elections, have failed to see the importance of the two political events.  On the other hand, the financial constraints, as predicted by many observers, have pushed the government to cut 20 percent of spending proposed by all ministries and government institutions.  The tightening policy seems to be the only way to enable the government to allocate sufficient funds for infrastructure, as well as health care and education. The implication is clear. Not only the backbone of national security, the police and the TNI, but also the General Elections Committee (KPU) and the Election Supervisory Body (Bawaslu) have to face the reality that their budgets may be substantially cut.  The budgetary tightening has, for example, forced the KPU to drop its plan to put a civilian security officer in each polling station to guarantee security. Since the plan has been scrapped, ballot-box security is now an issue, as the election law restricts the police from entering polling stations. There will be more than 500,000 polling stations spread across the country that need security oversight.  A limited budget will lure police leadership, particularly regional police chiefs, to justify seeking other sources of money to fund their operations. Local businesspeople and thugs will once again become the police’s financiers or ATMs, as many refer to them. Money collected from them will be distributed to pay daily ransoms, fuel spending or simply food and cigarette money for personnel in the field. We may say this off-the-books budget revenue constitutes corruption, but it seems hard to ask the police not to look for the extra money when the government is providing such skimpy budget. What the police are doing, however, is a clear case of forced or unintentional corruption. To make matter worse, National Police chief Gen. Sutarman has pledged that regardless of the insufficient budget allocated by the government for the police, the security force will always be ready to do its utmost to maintain safety and order prior to and after the legislative and presidential elections.  To me, this is not healthy. Security is always paramount to ensure that lives are not lost when something wrong happens, such as clashes between party followers or supporters of presidential candidates. As a professional institution, the police should not and cannot underestimate the likelihood of such occurrences. Security has a price. ●