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Hopes of holding political parties accountable for massive irregularities in campaign funding for the July presidential election were dashed on Tuesday after the National Police dropped the cases without investigation, claiming they were filed too late.

The Election Supervisory Board (Bawaslu) received a letter from the National Police stating, without explanation, that the investigations were halted, a Bawaslu official told the Jakarta Globe.

On Sept. 18, Bawaslu reported the campaign teams of incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Vice President Jusuf Kalla and former President Megawati Sukarnoputri for alleged campaign funding violations. The allegations were based on a campaign finance audit completed the week before.

Brig. Gen. Dikdik Mulyana Arif, the National Police’s deputy chief detective, said the cases were dropped because Bawaslu filed its complaints after the five-day window mandated in the Presidential Election Law.

“We didn’t have any other option but to drop the cases as they had expired,” Dikdik said, although he acknowledged he didn’t know when the expiration date was.

According to Bawaslu, the finance audit was formally reported to the body on Sept. 12, and it had five working days, until Sept. 18, to report alleged violations to the National Police.

Megawati and her campaign team were accused of receiving donations from PT Kertas Nusantara, a company that has foreign shareholders which is illegal.

Joko Suyanto, a member of Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party who signed the president’s campaign finance report, was reported after Bawaslu found that a
Rp 3 billion ($318,000) donation from PT BTPN, which also has overseas shareholders, was rewritten as donations from two companies solely owned by Indonesians.

Supervisory board member Agustiani Tio Fridelina Sitorus said that besides the violations reported to the National Police, Bawaslu found numerous other donations to Yudhoyono’s campaign that could not be clarified.

“Many of the donations came from unclear sources,” she said. “Some of them did not have tax registration numbers, and there are also big donations from five companies that have the same address.” Tio also said that Bawaslu rejected the National Police’s claims that it had missed the deadline to file complaints.

“We handed over the cases to the police on time, as we were very aware of the expiration time,” she said. “I don’t know whether there will be other action to keep the cases going.”

Indonesia Corruption Watch said the National Police’s decision to unilaterally drop the cases showed the country had a weak electoral legal system with those who gave and received illegal donations effectively having impunity from the law.

“It may develop into political corruption within the [next] government,” said Ibrahim Fahmy Badoh, head of ICW’s political division. “It will be difficult to clarify if the government gives projects to those who donated during the campaign.”

Fahmy said Yudhoyono’s incoming administration may feel obligated to reward business groups that supported it during the campaign. “This condition is imminent as we found many big donations to all candidates from business groups,” he said.

Fahmy called for a better system allowing Bawaslu to pursue cases after the election season officially ended. “In other countries, illegal campaign funding [cases] can be processed even after the election is over,” he said. “But here, we’re limited by time, with cases that might expire. This shows that the electoral legal system ... should be reformed.”