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One basic problem in the long list of problems related to campaign finance irregularities is bad legislation, according to an antigraft watchdog report released on Wednesday.

The report from Indonesia Corruption Watch said there were several loopholes in both the legislative and presidential election laws.
In the presidential election law, no ceilings are imposed on donations from political parties and from the candidates themselves, while donations from other sources are strictly regulated. Individual donations could not exceed Rp 1 billion ($106,000). The maximum corporate donation is Rp 5 billion.

ICW said unlimited donations from political parties and the candidates themselves may have been the sources of irregularities in campaign funding.

The law also failed to stipulate a standard method for reporting campaign contributions and the publication of resulting audits.
In addition, the law did not provide stern sanctions for violators, including disqualification.

“We need a new, better legal instrument to avoid collusion between business and politics,” said Ibrahim Fahmy Badoh, the coordinator of ICW’s political corruption division.

“With unclear laws, there have been many cases of halted investigations of campaign finance violations.”

Fahmy said there should be clear laws governing elections, including campaign funding.

Ferry Mursyidan Baldan, a former lawmaker who took part in the drafting of electoral laws, said the lack of harsher penalties for violators was based on the consideration of the potential impact.

“We thought that it might have a bad impact on the political situation,” Ferry said. “It is easier to disqualify candidates in legislative elections, as there are many other candidates, but the conditions for the presidential elections are different.”

Dodi Ambardi, director of the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) warned that the ICW report may just go to waste.

“If we want to highlight transparency and accountability in campaign donations, what we need to do is change the law,” he said.

“We can upgrade the limits for the donation, but it may create political dependency. Campaigns need big budgets and the laws give no solution for political parties to access big funding.”

Dodi added that the government should consider subsidizing political parties for the campaigns, just as it did in the past, to eliminate the need to seek extra funding to cover the large expense.

“Should this be implemented, then the political parties will have other financial sources and will not depend on big donations from the business world,” he said. “As we all know, elections are expensive, especially when the competition is mostly based on TV ads.”