Penal Framework Limitations Against Electoral Money Politics in Modern Indonesia
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This study aims to critically evaluate the systemic clash between the constitutional idealism of elections and the reality of political money that disrupts the democratic climate in Indonesia. The Constitution guarantees general elections in the noble ideals of the Indonesian nation, as in the preamble to the 1945 Constitution. Political money is not just a form of violation of formal law, but an existential threat that deprives citizens of the substantive right to vote and injures the integrity of democratic values in Indonesia. Normative Juridical Law Research Methods with Statutory Approaches and Conceptual Approaches. The results of the study show that money politics in campaigns are triggered by the accumulation of several determining factors, including the weak effectiveness of law enforcement sanctions, low voter political literacy, which leads to economic pragmatism, and high political costs that must be borne by legislative contestants. The consequences of the enduring practice of money politics have wide implications for the decline in the quality of leadership circulation, the decay of democratic institutions, and the birth of corrupt public policies due to the orientation of campaign capital returns. Therefore, it is necessary to reconstruct the penal law formula that is more progressive and strengthen participatory supervision to break the chain of money politics in the electoral ecosystem in Indonesia.
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