UU Pilkada Tuai Polemic, Segini Anggaran Pemilihan Kepala Daerah!

The momentum for regional head elections (Pilkada) has attracted the attention of various circles of society. Among them are students, workers, artists, and community leaders taking to the streets to demonstrate against the amendment to the Pilkada Law which will be ratified by the Republic of Indonesia.

Previously, the Legislation Body (Baleg) of the DPR RI agreed to bring the draft Revision of Law (RUU) Number 10 of 2016 concerning Regional Head Elections (Pilkada) to the Plenary Meeting on Thursday, August 22, today.

The change in the Pilkada Bill annulled the decision of the Constitutional Court (MK) which changed the threshold for nomination requirements in the Pilkada. And the age limit for regional head candidates must be 30 years.

The agreement to bring the draft bill on the Pilkada to the Plenary Meeting was taken in a mini-fractional view meeting which was held after the Pilkada Bill Working Meeting on Wednesday, August 21.

Eight out of nine political party factions approved the change to the bill. Among them were the Gerindra, Democrat, Golkar, PKS, NasDem, PAN, PKB, and PPP factions. Meanwhile, those who stated that they did not agree with the bill were brought to the Plenary Session only to the PDIP Faction.

Then how much is the budget spent by the government to carry out simultaneous regional elections in 2024?

For information, the Ministry of Finance (Kemenkeu) noted that the budget realization channeled through the Draft of the Regional Grant Agreement (NPHD) for the implementation of regional elections (Pilkada) was IDR 34.57 trillion until August 6, 2024 or reached 92 percent of the total budget set at IDR 37.52 trillion.

Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani Indrawati said that each Regional Government (Pemda) had distributed a grant budget to the Ministry of Finance to be distributed to the General Election Commission (KPU) and the General Election Supervisory Body (Bawaslu).

"So for this Pilkada, the Regional Government has issued Rp34.57 trillion from its APBD, donated to the center, to the Ministry of Finance. The Ministry of Finance directly distributes it to KPU and Bawaslu, until August 6. Later, the total overall that already has an agreement manuscript will have a budget of Rp37.52 trillion," Sri Mulyani said at our State Budget press conference in July 2024, Tuesday, August 13.

Sri Mulyani said that the realization of the grant budget that had been distributed to the KPU amounted to Rp. 26.85 trillion or 93 percent of the total budget for the KPU amounting to Rp. 28.76 trillion.

Meanwhile, the realization of the grant budget that has been distributed to Bawaslu is IDR 7.72 trillion or around 88 percent of the total budget set for Bawaslu is IDR 8.75 trillion.

"So it's as if the local government gave it to the central (central government), but that's actually for elections in their respective regions," he said.

Based on coordination with the Ministry of Home Affairs (Kemendagri), there will also be intercept Treasury Deposit Facility (TDF), Special Allocation Fund (DAK) or Revenue Sharing Fund (DBH) for local governments who have not completed their obligations.

For regions that have not completed their obligations, Sri Mulyani said that the Ministry of Finance will automatically deduct from the number of transfer obligations to the regions.

"For areas that have not completed their obligations, later we will immediately intercept them. This means that every month the Ministry of Finance transfers to the regions, if they already have a script but have not yet transferred, even though the Pilkada is close and there are preparations, we will immediately cut the transfer that we will transfer to each region," he said. According to Sri Mulyani, this was done to ensure that the Pilkada could run smoothly with the budget that should have been issued for 2024, namely Rp37.52 trillion.

"We use ether intercepts, which we have divided into regions, especially areas that still have a lot of cash, we pay using treasury deposit facilities. This means that we don't pay the area to cash, but he has a deposit in our treasury. But they can use it," he said.