The Urgency of Criminal Law Reform: From Money Politics to Criminal Acts of Corruption in Indonesian Elections

The implementation of general elections aims to embody the democratic system understood by the Indonesian people. General elections are conducted with public awareness of the importance of electing leaders who can bring about social welfare and protect the community. However, with the development of community dynamics, the level of awareness and understanding of choosing leaders based on the vision, mission, and needs of the community has changed due to the existence of criminal acts that are inseparable from every election. These criminal acts are specifically related to money politics. The prevalence of money politics is caused by various shortcomings, one of which is the formulation of regulations that prohibit money politics. In particular, it is known that accountability and sanctions tend to be less than ideal in their aim to prevent political money crimes. From another perspective, the formulation of political money norms in the Election Law is basically similar to the norms of corruption crimes, which prohibit “promising and/or giving money or other material things as compensation.” Given these facts, the hope of creating and realizing free and fair elections can be realized through the revision of criminal law, which initially classified money politics as a criminal act, to classify it as a criminal act of corruption.