One Election, Multiplied Costs

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Indonesias 2004 General Elections are to start next week, on Monday April 5, with almost 148 million votersand the General Elections Commission (KPU) as the master of ceremonies. The event will swallow up Rp3 trillion-plus, the KPU has submitted a request to the government for a further Rp900 billionthis national festival is being held with sky-high logistics costs. The ballot papers, for instance, appear to be one of the largest expenditures. Based on tenders that were all rushed, with logistics costs racing well ahead of market prices, plus the involvement of numbers of businesspeople unfit to have been selected, this general election will hence be a celebration that will cost a mint. TEMPOs investigation examines just where the waste occurred and how businessmen and middlemen united to tunnel away into the KPUs funds.

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THE businessman had done his sums two years ago. Sanusi Putra (not his real name), a Jakarta-born printer, is an old face in the business of election ballot papers. Reaping a very tidy profit in the 1999 General Election—of around 50 percent of his production price—he was determined to grab the same level of profit from this one. Experience has taught Sanusi that of all an election's various logistics requirements (ink, ballot boxes,

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