KPK: 82 Percent Of Candidates For Regional Heads Get Sponsor Funds From Third Parties

KPK Building (Photo: Irfan Meidianto / VOI)

JAKARTA - The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) said there were 82 percent of regional head candidates who did not finance their nominations but were assisted by third parties as sponsors. This is based on the results of the study.

"The fact is that in a previous KPK study there were about 82 percent of the regional head elections, 82 percent of which were funded by sponsors, not personally funded," said KPK Deputy Chair Nurul Ghufron in an online press conference with the Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs (Menko Polhukam ) Mahfud MD, Friday, September 11.

The existence of sponsors who support the campaign funds for the candidate for regional head, said Ghufron, will have the potential to create a conflict of interest because there is a feeling of indebtedness to the party providing the sponsor.

For this reason, the KPK then recommended that there be cooperation between the election organizers and the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK). The goal is that suspicious flows of funds received by regional head candidate pairs can be traced to prevent money politics.

"It needs cooperation and coordination with PPATK because PPATK as a financial transaction analyst has the ability to trace financial transactions which are then possible as money politics," said Ghufron.

Responding to the statement, the Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Mahfud MD admitted that he also knows the fact that there are regional head candidates who are financed by cukong. It is this kind of situation, which then gives rise to acts of corruption that are covered by policies taken by the regional heads.

Corruption through policy, said Mahfud, is more dangerous than corruption crimes in general. Because it is not impossible, the elected regional head will issue regulations that benefit the sponsor.

"It gave birth to a policy after being elected that gave birth to policy corruption and policy corruption was more dangerous than money corruption," Mahfud said in the same press conference.

One example is the granting of mining permits or land tenure permits to entrepreneurs that overlap with other regulations.

"It turns out that there is something that exceeds the area of its area, why is it because every new regent makes a new license to make a new license so that the overlap goes to the Constitutional Court in the end.

Although he admits that this is one of the weaknesses of the direct regional head election system, the former Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court still thinks that this system is still better than the regional head election through the DPRD.

"Never mind the direct elections, this has gone through a long political process and the problems have been resolved and we have to fix this," he concluded.