Bawaslu Checks Data Will Be A Former Corruptor Candidate

Chairman of Bawaslu Rahmat Bagja/ANTARA/Laily Rahmawaty

JAKARTA - The Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) will check the data on prospective legislative candidates with the status of former corruptors whether they have passed the five years to be able to run for the 2024 General Election participants.

This follows up on the records of Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) regarding the list of candidates (DCS) for prospective members of the DPR RI for the 2024 election, which was released by the KPU, there were former corruptors.

"We'll check whether it's been five years apart or not," said Bawaslu Chairman Rahmat Bagja, quoted by ANTARA, Tuesday, August 29.

Bagja said the checks were carried out after DCS data was announced by the KPU as a whole.

"Wait for the KPU, the DCSKPU announcement has started to come out," said Bagja.

Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) previously highlighted the list of candidates (DCS) for the 2024 DPR members released by the KPU. ICW noted that there were 12 names of former corruptors in the DCS for legislative candidates, both DPR and DPD levels published on August 19, 2023.

There are 7 DPR legislators who are former corruption convicts.

Two legislative candidates feel. From PDIP. Apart from Rokhmin, there is Al Amin Nasution who is the leg of the PDIP Electoral DPR (Dapil) Central Java VII.

Then there are three from the NasDem Party, namely Abdillah from the North Sumatra I electoral district, Abdullah Puteh from the Aceh II electoral district, and Rahudman Harahap from the North Sumatra I electoral district.

One candidate from the National Awakening Party (PKB), namely Susno Duadji Dapil South Sumatra II. Finally, one from the Golkar Party, namely Nurdin Halid Dapil South Sulawesi II.

ICW researcher Kurnia Ramadhana assessed that if the KPU did not announce the name of the candidate who was a former corruptor, then this condition would add to a series of controversies since the beginning of the election stage.

He assessed that the KPU seemed to cover up because it had not announced their legal status. This was confirmed from the statement of one of its members, namely Idham Holik, who stated that there was no order in the law to announce the status of former convicts of legislative candidates.

According to Kurnia, the statement contradicts the promise of KPU Chairman Hasyim Asy'ari, who at the end of July 2023 stated that the former corruption convict who was registered as a bacaleg would be announced during DCS determination. The absence of an announcement of the status of a corruption convict in DCS, he explained, would make it difficult for the public to participate in providing input and response to DCS optimally. Moreover, information regarding the life history list of the candidates will not be submitted through the KPU website.

"If in the end the former corruption convicts qualify and are determined in the permanent candidate list (DCT), it is certain that the community's probability of choosing a clean and integrity candidate will be smaller," he said.

In fact, he said, the results of a poll survey published by Litbang Kompas showed that as many as 90.9 percent of respondents did not agree with former corruption convicts running as legislative candidates in the election.

He said this condition was different from the 2019 election where the KPU at that time was very progressive because it announced the list of candidates who were former corruption convicts.