Kemendagri asks Pemda to Immediately Disburse Regional Election Budget

The Ministry of Home Affairs (Kemendagri) asked regional governments to immediately disburse the budget for the 2024 Pilkada according to the text of the regional grant agreement (NPHD) by the deadline of July 9, 2024. If, by July 9, the regional government does not disburse the budget, the Ministry of Home Affairs will send a team to the regions to see what the problem is.

“If the problem is that there is no money or the money is being held back, deliberately held back, we will force it to be immediately disbursed to the KPU, Bawaslu, and security forces,” said Minister of Home Affairs Tito Karnavian at the 2024 Simultaneous Regional Election Readiness Coordination Meeting for the Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Regions. Maluku in Makassar, which was broadcast live via Youtube by the Coordinating Ministry for Political, Legal, and Security Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia (26/6).

According to Tito, the important role of regional governments is budget issues, because if there is no election budget, the regional elections will not take place. He admitted that his party had sent the Minister of Home Affairs Circular Letter Number 900.1.9.1/433/9J on January 24, 2023, regarding the readiness of the 2024 Pilkada budget. Tito asked all regional heads to coordinate with the regional KPU, regional Bawaslu, and officials to calculate and submit budget proposals for regional elections.

“After that, it was realized in two stages, namely in the 2023 APBD at 40% and in 2024 at 60%. “Because there are several areas where regional finances are weak,” he said.

He further stated that the total NHPD budget for the KPU was IDR 25.65 trillion. However, what has just been realized is IDR 13.73 trillion, and what has not been distributed is IDR 14.93 trillion. He said that so far, the total realization has only been 40%, or as many as 71 regional governments.

Then there are 518 regional Bawaslu that have NHPD and 23 regional governments that do not have NHPD. The total budget amount reached more than IDR 8.53 trillion, while only more than IDR 4.43 trillion was realized and more than IDR 4.11 trillion was distributed. []