Needless to say, tycoons’ donations to candidates at any level is no “free lunch”. All these donations must of course be repaid in turn, not necessarily in cash, but perhaps as mining concession permits, building permits or building coefficients, forestry area permits, reclamation project permits, stadium construction project rights, rights to procure international events projects, capital development projects, or allotted government projects, from the center to the regions. In the end, our politicians, or our heads of government, will only be busy paying debts to their cukongs and not fulfilling their campaign promises to enable the people to prosper, as intoned sincerely by every candidate in speeches before taking office.
Even worse, many of these government leaders ended up being ensnared by the KPK while repaying their debts to the cukong. Hundreds of Regional Heads have been detained by the KPK in recent years. If so many have been caught for corruption, then this does not merely represent an individual problem, but is a systemic corrupted entity.
Read: Total reform, the only way to save the nation
Our expensive political system has been held hostage by the financiers (read: tycoons). Politics is a means to enrichen the existing rich, such as the barons and tycoons. Politics is no longer aligned to the welfare of the people. Activists, intellectuals, or working-class men are no longer fighting as the leaders or for the people. Only the puppet-master allows those who enter the very expensive political system to succeed.
The 20 percent threshold system for all-level elections is the main problem. It costs a fortune to gather political party support up to the 20 percent threshold. In the end, political party leaders are more like dealers (traders), not leaders. Political parties are commodities bought by the cukong as capital to transform the cukong’s “puppets” into political leaders.
This hopelessly corrupted political system must end. Therefore, I strongly support the KPK in its proposal to take unequivocal action: asking the Constitutional Court (MK) to abolish the presidential threshold system, which will undoubtedly annihilate the 20 percent threshold system in regional elections.