From ANW 21 May 2014,
A failed election candidate in Indonesia claims that bribes she paid to electoral officials to win a seat in last month's parliamentary polls were not honoured.
Agustina Amprawati, from the city of Pasuruan in East Java, has revealed she gave almost $AUD12,000, and a motorbike, to 13 officials who have responsibility for calculating votes and filling out official forms.
It was a down-payment which she claims the lower-level officials said would garner her 5,000 votes from each person.
But when it came time to summarise the votes, Ms Amprawati realised that her payments were going to come to nothing.
"I feel like I'm a victim, a victim of fraud," she said.
"When they offered me the chance, they asked me for money with the promise that I would become a provincial legislative member.
"But they denied the promise. And then challenged me when I raised the prospect of legal action."
Fraud allegations probed
The Pasuruan Election Monitoring Agency, which is investigating the claims, has recommended that the accused officials are discharged from their duties.
It has also called for a recount in 1,700 polling stations, saying it will consider a re-election in certain places if necessary.
"Of course this is very disappointing. It tarnishes the face of democracy in Pasuruan and at the national level," PEMA head Suryono Pane said.
"This kind of practice shouldn't happen if the election organiser understands the responsibility and the ethical code that they carry."
The agency also forwarded Ms Amprawati's claims to the police, and on the day the ABC visited she'd received a summons for questioning.
Ms Amprawati says she was prepared to expose the practice which she suspected was widespread, even though it could mean jail time if she's found guilty of a crime.
"Because they play games," she said.
"I lost my votes, mine were transferred to another candidate from the same party."
Corruption at mid-tier level
Indonesian authorities were already suspicious of the 13 officials before the allegations emerged, tightening their monitoring as the legislative elections swung into gear.
Indonesia's legislative elections on April 9 were a huge logistical task, with votes being cast at 546,000 polling votes at several different levels.
Indonesia votes
ABC News has comprehensive coverage of the 2014 Indonesia elections from our correspondents in the region
In a complicated system, the votes from the polling booths are collated and moved up to the levels where a government seat can be won or lost.
It's the tally of these votes as they proceed up the chain that authorities believe is most susceptible to abuse.
The body with national oversight of Indonesia's elections is combing through pages of data to track down voting irregularities in the recent legislative election, uncovering what appears to be corrupt practices at the mid-tier level of the process.
The election supervisory body says problems range from the shifting of votes between candidates, and cases where official forms have gone missing altogether, putting a stain on the country's maturing democratic process.
"Looking at the recapitulation result in the national level, we can see that in the lower level there are many things we found strange," said Nelson Simanjuntak, of the election supervisory board, known as Bawaslu.
"When we then checked to fix the mistake, we found that there are results that do not make any sense."
A major sin in a democracy'
Ms Amprawati has provided police with copies of receipts of the monies she paid to the election officials, just like a business transaction.
"This case is not common. What usually happens is money politics, between the candidates and the voters," said the Head of Detectives Bambang Sugeng.
"But this time it's an election office involved. This has rarely happened, and so we are paying attention to finish this case."
Ms Amprawati concedes that she is a part of a big problem in Indonesia, where corruption - or the possibility of it - has become an ingrained practice.
"To change the system, to be the speaker, one must do money politics," she said.
"To be a faction leader, one must do money politics. And to get close with other members, to even sit in the parliament, you must do money politics."
But there are also people in South-East Asia's biggest economy who want things done differently.
"It's a major sin in a democracy," said Bawaslu's Nelson Simanjuntak as he looked through the reams of suspect voting forms on his desk.
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wo 21 mei 2014 - 9:46