Bawaslu Suspects use of Money for Political Purposes in Campaigns

Jakarta (Antara) - The Election Supervisory committee (Bawaslu) has suspicions that political parties have practiced money politics in the past two-days of campaigns for the legislative elections. "We found evidence that political parties have used money for politics besides involving children in their campaign activities," Bawaslu's Chairman Muhammad told reporters on Tuesday. He said Bawaslu's team for legal affairs was still assessing the alleged use of money for political purposes. Therefore, the team had not yet made its findings public. "We cannot yet publicize the names of the political parties that we suspect to have practiced money politics because the findings are still being assessed by the team," Muhmmad said. Bawaslu's member Daniel Zuchron had previously reminded contestants of all the political parties that they should not distribute money or goods to the people during their political campaign activities. He said if they were proven to have given money to the people they would be disqualified from their membership as the electoral contestants or be disqualified from their legislature candidacy. "There are three things that can cause a political party to be disqualified from taking part in the elections, namely involvement in money politics, use of forged documents and failure to submit a campaign report to the General Elections Commission (KPU)," Daniel added. (*)