Many Indonesians think vote-buying ‘acceptable’: Poll

December 15, 2013 Leave a comment

Many Indonesians think vote-buying ‘acceptable’: Poll

Friday, December 13, 2013 – 18:18

AFP

JAKARTA – More than 40 percent of Indonesian voters consider politicians seeking to buy support at elections acceptable, a survey showed Friday, months before national polls in the graft-ridden country. In what it described as an “alarming” survey, Jakarta-based pollster Indikator found that 41.5 percent of 15,600 people interviewed did not have a problem accepting cash or a gift from would-be lawmakers.This compared to 57.9 percent who thought vote-buying was unacceptable, according to the survey. A tiny fraction were undecided on the matter.

However doling out money does not guarantee victory for a candidate, the poll showed – more than 55 percent quizzed said they would accept the cash but not necessarily vote for the person giving it.

The survey “shows our democracy is at an alarming stage as vote-buying at the grass roots has been found to be very high”, the pollster’s executive director Burhanuddin Muhtadi told AFP.

“This will threaten the country’s democracy.”

The survey, conducted in 39 electoral districts between September and October, found that voters who lived in rural areas were more tolerant of vote-buying than those in urban areas.

Legislative elections in the sprawling archipelago of around 250 million people will take place in April, followed by presidential polls in July.

Indonesia is ranked 114th out of 177 countries and territories in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. A number one ranking means the least corrupt.

 

Filed under Macro Trends

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a comment