Not Worried About Jorjoran Bansos Ahead Of The Election, Anies: People Choose Conscience

Presidential Candidate Anies Baswedan/ANTARA

Presidential candidate number 1, Anies Baswedan, admitted that he was not worried that people's choices would be affected by the provision of social assistance (bansos) by the government with a jumbo budget ahead of the 2024 General Election.

In this case, the government has set a budget for the distribution of social assistance of Rp496.8 trillion in the 2024 APBN. A number of parties suspect that President Joko Widodo has politicized social assistance because it was raised during the political year.

"Our people are very intelligent and they will choose with their conscience. They know which one to choose, they know which one to sort out," said Anies in Deli Serdang, North Sumatra, Thursday, February 1.

However, Anies once advised the Minister of Finance (Menkeu) Sri Mulyani to oversee the use of the budget so that politicization does not occur.

This is in response to Jokowi's decision to distribute direct cash assistance (BLT) of Rp600 thousand for the three months that were run in advance in February ahead of the voting day for the 2024 General Election.

"In the end, if the budget leaves the Ministry of Finance. We really hope that the Minister of Finance can become a guard at the time of this politicization," said Anies in Brebes, Central Java, Tuesday, January 30.

As is known, the social security protection budget set in the 2024 State Budget is greater than three years ago, namely IDR 439 trillion in 2023, IDR 460 trillion in 2022, and IDR 468 in 2021.

The nominal budget is only slightly different from the budget for distributing social assistance at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which was IDR 498 trillion.