Spotlight on South-East Asia: the Abuse of State Resources in Elections

The abuse of state resources to influence the outcome of elections in favor of preferred candidates has resurfaced in Indonesia and the Philippines and now poses one of the biggest challenges to organizing clean and credible elections in the region. It has become increasingly widespread in recent elections and varied in its appearances; when we say the abuse of state resources, we mean the misuse of government resources, whether material, human, coercive, regulatory, budgetary, media, or legislative-for electoral advantage.

The abuse of state resources has an unambiguous impact on electoral integrity, and international human rights law is clear on the subject. Nevertheless, the practice persists and poses serious threats to not only electoral credibility, but the ability of governments to stamp out corruption, resist state capture and deliver for their citizens.

Questions of the state of democracy in Indonesia and the Philippines is also a question of the state of democracy at the global level: both countries are some of the largest democracies on the planet and their combined population is greater than that of the United States of America and is nearly that of the entire European Union.  

Indonesia: the case of the Constitutional Court

Indonesia held general elections in February 2024, and the Constitutional Court’s (MK) decision to grant a narrow exception to the age limit for candidates - and roll out the red carpet for President Joko Widodo’s son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, to run for vice president – caught international headlines. Whereas the law previously held that all candidates for vice-president or president must be at least 40 years old, the Court ruled that exceptions should be made for candidates with previous governing experience. The 36 year-old Gibran was therefore eligible, as he had been mayor of Jakarta since 2020 – an election he won almost entirely unchallenged. But this was only part of the story.

The Constitutional Court's decision to lower the age requirement was additionally problematized by a clear conflict of interest: the then-Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court Anwar Usman was the then-president's brother-in-law – and therefore vice-presidential candidate Gibran’s uncle. The Ethics Council of the Constitutional Court found that the Chief Justice had committed an ethical violation and that a conflict of interest had occurred. As a result, Anwar Usman was dismissed from the position of Chief Justice and the Ethics Council ordered the Constitutional Court to elect a new chairperson.

However, this process did not affect the decision itself, and Gibran was duly elected vice president in the 2024 elections. The presence of the highly popular president's son as one of the contestants in the 2024 election by itself made the existing election competition process unequal due to the perceived high risk of misuse of state resources.

Indeed, there were indications that the Indonesian bureaucracy (formally the State Civil Apparatus, or ASN for short) and village officials failed to maintain their neutrality and misused state resources during the election campaign. This abuse of state resources is one of the arguments in the dispute over election results at the Constitutional Court. While the Constitutional Court rejected all electoral challenges, it failed for the first time to do so unanimously. Three dissenting judges argued that there has been misuse of state resources, such as the non-neutrality of some acting regional heads, the via the provision of social assistance, and also presidential intervention in in the 2024 elections.

The three dissenting judges pointed to the president's direct distribution of social assistance, which was ramped up in the preelection campaign. Evidence was presented in the trial that the distribution of social assistance – which should ostensibly be the domain of apolitical officials - was also carried out by an active minister who, during the visit to distribute social assistance, encouraged recipients to vote for one particular pair of candidates. The dissenting judges were also convinced that there was a problem with the neutrality of acting regional heads and cited several cases discovered during the legal investigation. One of the  dissenting judges also stated that President Joko Widodo and his allies had harmed the electoral system with their conduct.

The case of the Philippines

According to the Legal Network for Truthful Election (LENTE), similar abuse of administrative resources occurred in the Philippines’ most recent election. LENTE’s monitoring of the 2022 elections found both the abuse of institutional resources - infrastructure, vehicles, and stationery, such as allies of incumbent candidates using government vehicles to transport supporters to campaign events and to distribute campaign materials -- and the  abuse of financial resources - public money used for electoral purposes such as for campaigns or specific candidates or political parties.

LENTE's findings also show abuse of social welfare programs, concessions, and the awarding of government contracts. This included the use of “Job Orders” – public procurement of short-term work contracts - as a form of "legal" vote-buying. Local executives engage additional job order personnel as early as a year before the elections; these job order personnel then vote according to instructions and often function as coordinators for the election of electoral campaigns.

LENTE also found an abuse of social welfare projects wherein officials would make sure to be present for distribution of benefits during the election stages, making it hard for voters to distinguish between legitimate social welfare payments and the abuse of state resources. Every citizen has the right to gain access to welfare and public services, but misuse by those with political power can unfairly tilt the electoral playing field.

The abuse of state resources not only harms the credibility of elections, but also contributes to the growth of political corruption more broadly. Publicly-owned resources are misdirected for the benefit of certain citizens (one candidate, party, or group of supporters); resources are taken away from the basic functions of government, including health, safety, education, and the rule of law, or diverted away from the most marginalized populations (women, ethnic, and religious minorities, people with disabilities, IDPs, people living in poverty, and others). If unchecked, this misuse leads to political domination, state capture and failure of a government to serve its citizens. Beyond reform and strict enforcement of campaign finance and electoral laws, there must be transparency and accountability in governance, including in the provision of social assistance and the appointment of public officers. The supervision of election implementation also needs to be more progressive, and all actors must adhere to the core principles that undergird free and fair elections.