Ternate, N Maluku, (Antara Babel) - A regional legislative candidate from the Islamic-based United Development Party (PPP) in North Maluku province, took back his donation to a mosque after allegedly failing to become legislator at the local parliament.
According to the treasurer of Al Muhajirin mosque, Fardanan Fahri, members of Ruslan Jafar's campaign team gave a cash donation worth Rp10 million for the mosque along with a television unit for the young community at Pasir Putih village, Halmahera Selatan district.
Fardanan admitted that he had asked whether the donation was meant to influence the local people to choose Ruslan Jafar during the regional legislative election, but Ruslan Jafar himself denied it. However a few days after the election, when Ruslan Jafar was known to have only got seven votes from the local community, some members of Ruslan Jafar's campaign team came over to the mosque and took back the television set that was given as donation.
Ruslan Jafar could not be contacted up till now by the press regarding this incident.
Meanwhile North Maluku's Chairman of Independent Committee for Election Monitoring (KIPP) Nurdin Muhammad stated that the action taken by Ruslan Jafar and his team was a reflection of a politician who has no integrity.
"Politicians who buy votes from the people are not worth to be legislators," he noted.
Nurdin also called upon the people of Pasir Putih village to report the case to the Election Monitoring Agency (Bawaslu) because such an action was a violation toward election regulation.
Indonesia is holding two elections this year, namely the parliamentary election on April 9 and the presidential election on July 9.
The scheduled parliamentary election is set to choose 560 members of the House of Representatives (DPR), 132 members of Regional Representatives Council (DPD), 2,137 members of provincial legislative assembly and 20,257 members of the district/city`s legislative assembly.
About 185.8 million Indonesians are eligible to cast their vote in the 2014 election with 2.2 million among them living abroad. Those who live abroad cast their votes from March 30 to April 6 for the parliamentary elections. Their votes will be included in the electoral area of DKI Jakarta II, consisting of Central Jakarta and South Jakarta.
