In last week’s highly dramatic lead up to the registration of presidential and vice presidential candidates for next April’s election, one of the most shocking moments came when then-Vice Governor Sandiaga Uno was accused of paying IDR1 trillion (around US$70 million) in “political dowry” to secure his nomination as Prabowo Subianto’s running mate.
The accusation came from Democratic Party Deputy Secretary General Andi Arief, who, on the eve of Sandiaga’s nomination, tweeted that the former vice governor paid IDR500 billion each to Islamic parties PAN and PKS — both of whom had expected to have their cadres chosen as Prabowo’s running mate. The Democrats, who only recently joined the coalition of opposition parties led by Prabowo’s Gerindra, expected Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, son of former president and Democratic leader Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, to be nominated as his VP pick.
Now that the chaos within the opposition coalition has died down somewhat (particularly after the Democrats stated their intention to remain in the coalition after considering walking away amid the drama), Sandiaga has finally publicly denied the political dowry allegation and asked that the media not to blow it out of proportion.
“It’s very untrue,” Sandiaga told reporters yesterday, as quoted by Kompas.
“If [reporters] want to steer left or right that’s fine, but don’t go too far from transcript [of my interviews]. I have never said that (about the political dowry). But, I say this should be a presidential election that unites. Let’s be friends, let’s unite.”
Sandiaga did admit that he was preparing to contribute a certain amount of money to help fund the campaign but denied that it was in a way a dowry to secure his position on the ticket. He also said he would visit the offices of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) today to fully disclose his assets, adding that he makes such reports regularly.
Last week, PAN threatened legal action against Andi Arief over his allegation, though no formal investigation has materialized since. Furthermore, as soon as the Democrats reiterated their commitment to Prabowo’s coalition, Andi himself softened his accusation by saying that he heard the dowry allegation from someone else and that he “didn’t know it if’s true or not.”
Gerindra officials, on the other hand, denied the allegation but also said they were choosing not to pay attention to it.
But now that the accusation is out there, the Elections Advisory Agency (Bawaslu) says that it is ready to investigate Sandiaga’s alleged political dowry. And if indeed there is hard evidence that Sandiaga paid the enormous sums to PAN and PKS in order to secure his nomination, then that would mean he, as well as the political parties that allegedly accepted his money, would be in violation of the country’s election law and at risk of facing some seriously negative repercussions.
The practice of cadres having to pay their parties enormous “dowries” in order to receive nominations and cover the costs of their campaign is extremely pervasive in the world of Indonesian politics. On top of their basic corruption of the democratic process, in many cases candidates end up of having to finance the dowries by making crooked money-making deals once they’re in office.
