Bawaslu Worries That The Practice Of Money Politics In The 2020 Pilkada Is Rampant Because Of The COVID-19 Pandemic

Illustrations (Irfan Meidianto / VOI)

JAKARTA - The Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) is concerned that the practice of money politics will flare up in the 2020 Pilkada due to the declining economic situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"It is our concern that with the declining economic conditions, money politics in 2020 will increase because people are very permissive of money politics," said Bawaslu Member Ratna Dewi Pettalolo at the online Rakornas Sentra Gakkumdu in Jakarta, as quoted from the official website of Bawaslu, Monday 31 August.

Moreover, Dewi added, the rules regarding the prohibition of money politics in the regional elections are not limited to certain people, for example election participants, campaign participants and campaign implementers.

"Now, the subject is said to be 'everyone' and that makes it easier to deal with alleged treaty violations because there are no restrictions on the subject," he said.

However, he is worried, the reporting of this money politics practice will be low. Because, in the existing rules, the giver and receiver will be sanctioned.

"This condition that we are worried about will close the space for public participation because if they report they will be subject to sanctions," he said.

Furthermore, Ratna said, public participation in reporting incidents of suspected election criminal violations is predicted to be low due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dewi said, in the 2015 and 2018 Pilkada, which was carried out was not a pandemic or a normal situation, the data showed that the number of public reports was much lower than the figures found by Bawaslu.

In fact, he continued, in several incidents of alleged violations such as money politics, political dowry often took place in closed rooms that were difficult to detect by election supervisors and required public participation to report them.

"If public participation is low, then we are worried that the quality of handling violations in 2020 will be low because there are many allegations of criminal offenses that are undetected and cannot be processed," he said.