Jakarta — Conducting a campaign in a place of worship is a very clear violation against the election provisions.
Vice President of the Republic of Indonesia (Wapres RI), KH Ma’ruf Amin emphasized to all parties not to carry out campaigns in places of worship.
Not only alluding to campaigns in places of worship, but he also emphasized the prohibition on money politics.
“Yes, I think first, of course there can be no money politics, there are already rules. There are also rules for campaigning in places of worship,” he said.
When there are findings in the field, allegations of money and food distribution, according to the Vice President, this must be directly verified by Bawaslu.
The reason is, Bawaslu is indeed the party with the authority to determine whether there was a violation in the process of the election stages or not.
“Regarding the various cases that have occurred, we may ask the Bawaslu to verify whether it was something that was banned or not, later the authority will be the Bawaslu’s territory,” he said.
Furthermore, KH Ma’ruf Amin said that in the electoral regulations, in fact, everything was clearly regulated regarding what violations could not be committed.
“Surely the rules already exist, whether they live according to or not, or if he breaks the rules or not. I think we’ll wait for Bawaslu to give an explanation,” he said.
Meanwhile, Bawaslu member Lolly Suhenti emphasized that election participants were prohibited from campaigning in places of worship.
This prohibition is stated in Article 280 letter (h) of the Election Law, which states that election participants may only use a place of worship when invited by the person in charge of the place.
Then, election participants who come to the place of worship are not required to wear their election campaign attributes at all.
“If election participants attend (at a place of worship) with a note that they do not bring campaign attributes, note that the second one is invited. So the campaign participants are present (at places of worship) if invited,” said Lolly.
Also including, according to him, there are additional rules from Bawaslu namely election participants who are invited to places of worship should not only be one of the election participants.
“The three notes in Bawaslu are added to the rules, (election participants) are invited (to a place of worship) not only one of the election participants can be invited,” he said.
Lolly Suhenti emphasized that the Bawaslu’s efforts were in line with the steps of the Ministry of Religion (Kemenag) which stated that mosques could not be used as campaign sites.
In fact, his party has not only banned mosques, but also other places of worship such as prayer rooms, pagodas, temples and churches.
“It’s also not allowed in the courtyard of a place of worship, the fence is also not allowed because it’s still within the scope of a place of worship,” he said.
