Indonesia will have upcoming local direct election that will implemented simultaneously in half of total local government at the end of year 2015. The steps of this event should be started soon and will co-manage by central and local election commissions. The moment of power transition usually followed by the reconfiguration of positions in politics, bureaucratic actors, as well as their relation to the private/business actors in local. The challenges in the transition period is to hold and maintain power relation as well to gain the most benefit new position of each important actors. Every actors will see this transition period and playing important roles based their owned access to resources including public resources to show supports to their allay who are competing as candidates. In this situation, all of supports such as campaign financing, facilities and networks are important by all candidates and should be closely monitored by public. Even more in the regions where the incumbent mayor or governors are re-runs for the second tenure, the moment of local direct election will be very important.
The important of this issue raised to be related with the natural resources problem is the possible use of licenses of natural resources in local by the local leader to be exchanged with support money or facilities for the local election campaign. The incumbent candidate who runs for their second tenure tends to use every possible sources that can be accessed for successful campaign. Many direct grants program from local budget will be addressed to communities, many services will be delivered using very low level of bureaucracies to get in touch directly to the grass root level people, the using of government facilities such as vehicles, offices, communication, media and the latest and the most dangerous is the using of power to produce licenses that can be distributed and exchanged with the political supports, money supports and networks supports.
In the election time these exchanges could be happened since the nomination period inside political parties that will promote the candidate until the campaign period when candidates really need networks to gathered supports from constituents. This practices happened in the latest election of 2014, in some regions. In regions for example Jambi, many parliament candidates posters placed inside the forest as only as a sign or showing of support to certain political parties and candidates by the owners of the land or forest concessions.
To prevent the use of natural resources licenses to be used by the local incumbent or non incumbent candidates, we have to endorse strongly to Central Election Commission and Minister of Interior to formulate regulation of moratorium of forest of natural resources licensing before the simultaneous local direct election starts on April/June 2015. We can not imagined how big is the catastrophic damages will occurs in local if there is no one initiated to prevent this.
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Best Regards..
