Government-DPR Urged To Immediately Approve 2024 Election Budget

JAKARTA - In the midst of the issue of postponing elections, a researcher from the Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem), Nurul Amalia Salabi, urged the government, DPR, and the General Elections Commission (KPU) to immediately ratify the 2024 election budget.

"We at Needdem strongly encourage the Government, the DPR, as well as the KPU to hasten the budget for the 2024 General Election," said Nurul in a virtual discussion, Wednesday, March 16.

Nurul views that the government cannot reason that it does not have sufficient budget to meet the needs of organizing the political contestation. In this case, the KPU proposes a budget for the 2024 election of IDR 76.6 trillion.

Bearing in mind, said Nurul, that the government clearly knew from the start that simultaneous elections were held once every 5 years. So, the budget should have been prepared from the start.

"If the government and the DPR feel that the budget that has now been realized by the KPU, Rp. 76.6 trillion is still too big, what should be built that can be rationalized again," he said.

Nurul said that if the election budget was not immediately ascertained, this ambiguity could hinder the implementation of the stages of the election by the KPU which needed to start 20 months before the election day on February 14, 2024.

"If the PKPU schedule and stages do not exist, the budget does not exist either, then it is difficult for us to see the commitment of the parties from the government that the 2024 election will be held," he explained.

Previously, the KPU revised the proposed 2024 election budget from Rp. 86 trillion to Rp. 76.6 trillion. The figure of Rp. 76.6 trillion is the result of the rationalization of the KPU's final proposal.

KPU commissioner Pramono Ubaid Tanthowi revealed that the 2024 election budget did experience a significant increase compared to the 2019 election budget.

"There has been a significant increase compared to the KPU budget in the 2019 election," said Pramono, Wednesday, February 16, 2022.

Pramono explained that the KPU saw the budget needs for the 2024 Presidential Election and Regional Head Elections in their preparation. Then, the KPU prepares technical guidelines for governance, including accountability for the election budget and regional head elections.

"Several considerations that form the basis of the calculation are the addition of the number of voters and the number of polling stations," said Pramono.

According to him, the KPU predicts that voters in 2024 will increase from 192 million to more than 200 million. "The increase in the budget also takes into account the addition of the ad hoc agency fee from Rp 500 thousand to Rp 1 million," said Pramono.