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THE ARCHIPELAGO

Papua poll officials held for bribery

Nethy Dharma Somba and Panca Nugraha, The Jakarta Post, Papua, Mataram | Fri, 10/01/2010 8:31 AM | The Archipelago

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The Jayapura Police have detained three officials from the Jayapura General Elections Commission (KPUD) and the city’s election monitoring commission (Panwas) for taking bribes from a candidate ticket.

Jayapura Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Imam Setiawan told reporters on Thursday that the officials — Jayapura KPUD chief Henk Bleskadit, KPUD employee Viktor Menengkey and Jayapura Panwas chief Moses Yaumungga — were taken into custody on Wednesday and Thursday.

Viktor and Moses had been named suspect but Henk, who was detained Thursday, was still a witness.

Imam said they were suspected of having taken bribes from a candidate pair that had registered to run in the city’s mayor election.

“The amount of cash given amounted to hundreds of millions of rupiah. We have the cash transfer [receipts] as evidence,” Imam said.

He said the officials had been bribed to ensure the candidate ticket cleared the registration phase to be able to run in the election. However, the pair was rejected and members of the same ticket’s campaign team reported the KPUD officials to the police for taking the bribes.

The election officials, he said, had violated the 2001 Law on Corruption, which carries a maximum sentence of 12 years’ imprisonment.

“The case will be our priority and we will investigate further to find out whether there are more people involved in this,” he said.

He said that Viktor, who oversaw vote verification at the KPUD, had allegedly abused his power by taking bribes from candidates. He said he hoped Jayapura residents would support the arrest.

“We have to enforce the law and this arrest will not affect the ongoing Jayapura city election process,” Imam said.

Separately, Papua KPUD chief Benny Sweni said he hoped the arrests would not disrupt the mayor election, which is scheduled for Oct. 11. Six tickets have been approved to run.

“We respect the ongoing legal process and hope it will not affect the election,” Benny said.

However, he said, no decision had been taken to find a temporary replacement for the arrested KPUD officials, adding that such a decision would likely be made once the court had announced its verdict.

Separately, West Nusa Tenggara Police have questioned former Dompu regent Syaifurrahman Salman, who served from 2005-2010, for alleged corruption in a car procurement project and a Japanese government grant worth Rp 750 million.

“We questioned him on Wednesday from morning until 10 p.m.; still as a witness,” police spokesman Adj. Comr. Lalu Wirajaya told The Jakarta Post on Thursday, adding the witness would be questioned again on Oct. 5.

He said the police had named two people suspects in the case before it had begun questioning the regent.

Wirajaya said the administration had planned to procure cars for state officials in 2008 using an allocated budget of Rp 750 million. The administration also received two cars as a grant from the Japanese government.

“The budget to buy the cars was still being used but it is suspected that the [purchased] cars were those given through the grant,” he said.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/10/01/papua-poll-officials-held-bribery.html