 Bentar, ini lagi minat sekuriti kekuatnya ini. The stream has started that idea, ya. Ini lagi minat sekuriti kekuatnya. The stream has started that ideas YouTube channel. Atau dimulai aja kan udah di idea udah muncul, nggak apa-apa di program. Soalnya ini agak lama sih kalau ini. Oke, ya. Oke, we can start now. Thank you. Warm greetings everyone. Recording in progress. Whether you are tuning in from. Good morning. Good afternoon and good evening to all. I am Krishpur Agrawal and I'm your host and moderator for today. It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the international conference on reforming political party finance in Southeast Asia towards greater transparency and accountability, organized jointly by Preludium and International IDEA with support from the USAID to commemorate the International Democracy Day celebrated annually on 15 September. The topic for today couldn't be more relevant as political finance is one of the most crucial issues of our times when it comes to the quality of democracy. Today's event is the first in the series of conferences being organized on the issue of political party finance in Southeast Asia to be held between the months of September and October. These series of conferences are being organized primarily to disseminate the results of research by Preludium under the Respect Project on political party finance reform in Southeast Asia especially in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Timoleste as well as to identify and analyze the challenges and opportunities related to political party finance reforms in Southeast Asian countries. To kick start the conference, I would like to invite Ms. Khuruni Sanur Agustyati, the Executive Director of Preludium to provide her opening remarks. Ms. Agustyati, the floor is yours. Terima kasih, Kusru. Good day, everyone. Thank you for joining us in this virtual conference of reforming political finance system in Southeast Asia towards greater transparency and accountability. This conference is part of International Day commemoration that we celebrate every year at September 15. This is a series of international conference of political party finance reform agenda in Southeast Asia that supported by USCID and the Respect Program for Asia-Pacific Regional Support for Election and Political Transition Program. One of the activities of Respect Program is doing research about political finance reform. This is joint research that conducted by not only Preludium, but also Preludium's partner, Lente from Philippines, Bersing 2.0 from Malaysia, Pradeit and Kokus from Timoleste. And not only that, we have also collaboration with the international idea to give the international perspective for this research. So, everyone, you can see on your screen this is the cover of the book. This is the result of the research. This research consists of five parts. The first is about comparative overview of political finance system in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Timoleste, the regional context and the way forward. It is written by the international idea. And then the second part is political party finance in Indonesia, never ending reform. The third is political party financing in Malaysia. The fourth is political party finance in the Philippines. And the fifth is political party finance reform in Timoleste. You can all download this research in our website www.preludium.org. And we will also share the link on the chat box so you can download this research. So, ladies and gentlemen, if we talk about political party finance in Southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Timoleste, we can see that there is more or less we are in the same condition. There is still lack of comprehensive regulations, not only for the limitation of donation or spending, but also the reporting and audit process of political finance. To disseminate this research, we, as well as to discuss the agenda to political party finance reform in Southeast Asia, we held a series of international conference. This is also collaboration with the international idea. Lente, Bersing 2.0, Predit and Cocu. So this is not only the conference that we held, but we still have three other conferences. Tomorrow we will have conference that held by our friends from the Philippines, Lente. So don't forget to join tomorrow's conference. I would like to say my gratitude to all writers and all speakers for this conference. Mr. Yuki Hiko, Mr. Andreas Ufen, Ms. Rumi Zai, Ms. Desi Manjuntag and also of course our moderator, Ms. Kusbu Agrawai. Thank you so much for making the time for this conference and have a great discussion. Back to you, Kusbu. Thank you very much, Miss Agustiati for this very comprehensive and succent introduction. I would like to invite Ms. Lina Rikila-Taman, Regional Director for Asia and the Pacifica International Idea to share her remarks. Lina, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Kusbu and welcome and thank you everyone for attending this conference on reforming political finance systems in Southeast Asia. As mentioned, the conference is all organized also to commemorate International Day of Democracy on which takes place on 15 September. And while the movement it is the work of PELUDEM and the other civil society organizations that gives us glimmers of hope and like the research that we are doing today. And I would like to recognize and report at the end I think it's the report that is first of its kind taking a comparative look at the finance systems in Southeast Asia and civil society organizations and experts. And I'm also grateful for PELUDEM and the respect project for involving international idea. And hence recognizing also our long term plans and here let me also take an opportunity to thank the Manian Politics Team at IDA Stockholm for their support and cooperation and they've also contributed in today's conference panel. International idea is in the governmental organization including Indonesia and the Philippines as member states from Southeast Asia and our mandate is to support democracy worldwide and money and politics and political finance is one of our priority areas of work. Cross country study that we have at hand related to interest of use of money and I think it sends us a warning sign we must all be very alert the potential state of state capture will visit use of money in politics but this report also sends us encouraging sign by proposing what do mitigate those adverse effects of non-regulated political finance practices and how to better enforce such regulations where they exist. In June this year international idea launch the global state of democracy in daisies to be found from IDA website and we can see the data shows that corruption continues to quality democracy and in and not much proper part of overall corruption medical transparency while not silver bullet go a long way in curbing political corruption and therefore the civil society is approaching more transparency more accountability and more enforceable regulation needs to be supported and this study is a first step in direction and I applaud USA as well for deciding to support project like respect so I personally look very much forward to this discussion panel and I'm sure this panel will discuss not only the problems but also propose solutions for us to contemplate many thanks and back to you thank you very much Lina we had some technical issue listening to your entire speech but we did get a gist of what is that so thank you very much but that's okay I think the audience could find to get the gist of your presentation so thanks a lot I just want to remind all our participants that the report is now available on Veloodim's website and our colleague will post the link to the report on the chat box and you can access and read at your leisure thank you very much Lina once again with this we now move on to our panel for today let me quickly run you through some housekeeping rules panel during the first 60-70 min I will be asking some questions to our panellists and for the rest 15-20 min we will take some questions from the audience please use the Q&A function if you are joining us via zoom if any of our participants want to directly ask a question to our panellist please use the raise hand function and we will take your question during the Q&A round if you are interested in either of Veloodim or of International Idea please feel free to leave your questions in the comment section and we will moderate those questions Southeast Asia is a diverse region and this diversity is reflected in the political finance systems in the different countries of the region there are some similarities but also differences one thing that is common among them is none of the system is perfect loopholes in regulatory frameworks lack of compliance from political actors or ineffective implementation all the 90 minutes is definitely not enough, we will try our best to uncover some of these issues and identify the possible solutions to these problems in the region and to do so, we are joined by four distinguished panellists today with extensive knowledge and experiences on political party finance systems both globally and in Southeast Asia first we have Miss Rumbitay Kandavaspika Rundundu who is the Senior Advisor for Democracy and Inclusion at International Idea she is a democracy and gender diversity advocate and practitioner and with several years of engagement on gender equality and women's empowerment in political systems and political parties electoral systems and processes constitution building, political financing and parliamentary strengthening all across the globe Professor Andreas Ulfin is an adjunct professor at the University of Hamburg and a Senior Research Fellow at the Giga Institute of Asian Studies in Hamburg his main interest are democratization political Islam, political parties and elections in Southeast Asia he has published several edited volumes as well as numerous articles and refereed journals we also would have today Dr Daisy Siman Chuntak who is an associate fellow at ICS Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore as well as a visiting fellow at National Chengchi University and Taipei both a political scientist and political anthropologist she finished her PhD in 2010 from the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands her main interests are Southeast Asia's democratic challenges Indonesia's democracy, decentralization and identity politics last but not the least we have Dr Yuki Hiku Hamada who is a program manager Dr Hamada leads the Money in Politics program that supports political finance reforms across the world by providing evidence-based policy analysis and technical assistance to oversight agencies and other stakeholders his areas of expertise focus on comparative analysis of political finance systems anti-corruption and digital solutions to increase political finance transparency so with this broad diverse knowledge and experience that we have in the room today I am very hopeful that we will be able to have a very productive and influential discussion today and as I said we will dive directly into the questions and hear from our panelists so my first question is for you Yuki this might sound a very simplistic question but it is a rather important one why do you think it is important to regulate the use of money in politics and could you relate this experience to Southeast Asia? Well, thank you Yuki and yes indeed it's a rather simplistic question but it's a very important one and also super fitting to commemorate International Democracy Day to start with money in politics or by political finance we often mean the funding the regulations relating to the funding of political parties and election campaigns and then I can't stress enough but the regulation around political finance is a cornerstone milestone to safeguard integrity and accountability and transparency of politics in any democracies for a number of reasons to give you a few examples just a way of introduction to kick off this panel discussion the first one is for example unregulated or not effectively designed political finance regime could easily distort fair and open election among political parties just to give you context that many countries for example provide state funding or public funding to political parties but the criteria for allocation or criteria for LGBT for such funding is not carefully considered only the ruling parties or larger parties will benefit from such system and leaving smaller parties or challenger parties in a very disadvantage position well similarly again if the money in politics if the political finance is well regulated this will open the door to and do inference or large money to influence the political processes and decision making processes in any countries this could often lead to corruption or corruption risks in many countries and as Lina mentioned has developed this global index called global state of democracies one of the indicators of just GSOD index is to measure the absence of corruption in around the world and interestingly if you look at this particular component of GSOD index's absence of corruption so to say the perceived level of corruption in the world and also in Southeast Asia has not changed significantly in the last 10 years and of course there are a number of reasons behind this static state of absence of corruption but certainly one of the driving reasons behind it is the slow reform process in political finance or money in politics area so these figures but also some of the arguments I just mentioned definitely underscore the need to up our game to implement the existing political finance regulations and also think more innovative ways to make money more positive role in politics and I might just leave it here then but I'm happy to take questions later Thank you very much Yuki and you set a very good stage for my next question which was for Daisy said that regulating the use of money in politics is important to uphold democratic accountability what can political finance regimes in Southeast Asia say about the quality of democracy in the region Daisy, the floor is yours Thank you very much Kuchbu Thank you very much Hello to everyone from Taipei so yeah based on my very short observation on this subject in Southeast Asia I by no means am an expert on this but I've written a short article on political finance in several countries in Southeast Asia Namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar just an overview of what is really happening so it's not really like a deep analysis into the problems of each countries however it could already be discerned that they showed similar several similar features namely the lack of or absence of regulations the linkages between businesses and politics there's also an unlevel playing field for large and small parties there's a question of corruption and there's different levels of course corruption in different levels of rampancy and lastly also a weak monitoring mechanism so if we connect this into the quality of democracy in Southeast Asia so in their 2004 article in Journal of Democracy Larry Diamond and Leonardo Morlino they wrote that while there's no one single framework for gaaging democratic quality there are eight dimensions on which democracy is very in quality so there is the question of freedom, the question of rule of law vertical accountability horizontal accountability responsiveness, equality participation, competition so these eight things are important we're trying to see whether there is a substantial level of quality of democracy in Southeast Asia so problems in party and campaign financing that I've said before all these problems the similar features it can be categorized under challenges in democratic dimensions such as the rule of law, vertical and horizontal accountability meanwhile the unlevel playing field distorts competition so in my opinion in order so in order to increase the quality of democracy in my opinion pertaining to the political financing aspect it is useful for for countries to increase public financing basically of politics but not only that the most important thing is also to ensure that there is accountability because giving parties a lot of money but not asking them to be responsible for the money and not asking them to open their reports to public scrutiny is also not good so political parties must report their income and expenditures and get audited by public auditors and these reports have to be open for the public this hopefully would discourage parties from soliciting illegal donations and also it might help to limit business influence in politics and also improve openness in the internal decision making of the party so hopefully when that is rich then there is more quality in the democracy in South East Asia Thank you Daisy and you touched on a very important issue of public funding but we will get back to the question of public funding at the latest stage but right now I want to pose a question to Andreas both Yuki and Daisy emphasize the role that political finance can play in combating corruption and you have written a lot about interlinkages between political finance and corruption in South East Asia so my question to you is what are some of the factors relating to political finance that has had implications on corruption in the region I think political finance and corruption are linked in many different ways for example on regime type on the form of political competition between candidates and between political parties and the link between private and state owned companies and politics in general for example in closed authoritarian systems there is often no real need to spend much money there is almost no competition such as in Vietnam for example also in Indonesia under Suatu until 1998 in Singapore you have an electoral authoritarian system but very much dominated by the people's action party a very strong party opposition parties in Singapore a week and in combination with a system of very strict political finance, regulations money politics is not really an issue in Singapore the problem begins with you could call them hybrid regimes in between closed authoritarianism and liberal democracy that is competitive authoritarian systems electoral democracies in these systems you have incentives for entrepreneurs to invest money in politics the electoral contestation is very strong and at the same time democratic institutions oversight agencies for example courts are quite weak if you look in Malaysia for example until at least 2018 there was a very strong link between the dominant party Amno and state owned corporations so called government linked corporations and private big business Amno even had its own corporations like some other parties like the Malaysian Chinese Association and until now nobody really knows despite the central leadership of Amno what exactly this party owns moreover the whole bureaucracy in Malaysia including the state owned corporations were and maybe are to an extent still are indirectly controlled by Amno and all this contributed for example to the well known 1MDB scandal a few years ago when almost 700 million US dollars were transferred to the private accounts of then prime minister Najib Razak and he again used at least parts of it for electoral campaigning Amno In other countries like Indonesia and the Philippines there's also a very close link between parties candidates and big business in the Philippines you have these old dynasties, the clans that rule the country since well maybe 100 years in Indonesia this is all discussed under the heading of oligarchy in Indonesia some political parties are owned by these very rich people and other parties are well under the influence of these oligarchs many of them are media outsourced and because of that control the whole debate on politics especially during political campaigns civil society is in Indonesia at least now I would say quite weak and not really able to push some reforms they were stronger a few years ago and were able to well to support some political finance reforms but these have been watered down in recent years for example the corruption eradication commission the carpet car has been weakened a lot so these are some of the main factors I would say Thank you very much Andreas and it's very interesting that you mentioned the example of Malaysia and actually it's one of the few countries that actually doesn't have any specific regulation pertaining to political finance as of now very interesting discussion and also it was mentioned that regulation of political finance can result in level playing field but does it really so my next question is to Rumbizai based on researches and experiences that you have gathered on gender equality and inclusion in politics what are the interlinkages between political finance and gender and does political finance really play an important role in bringing more women into politics Thank you Koshu and greetings to everyone the point that you raise is very pertinent in fact I also noted that aspect about leveling the playing field is just interrogating and reflecting on it in terms of leveling the playing field to what extent because I think many times we argue for leveling the playing field of course largely essentially maybe between one group of men and another group of men and I have to put it blankly like that because the challenge that we have is that societies are very patriarchal so when we are putting forward the narrative about leveling the playing field essentially we are not going beyond and saying who are the main actors and beneficiaries of this leveling of the playing field and to a very large extent you see this is why as an illustrative example we still have only women constituting 25% of the world parliamentarians so if you take about the 40,000 or 45,000 parliamentarians of the world women are only 25% of that and from all the research Koshu as you have asked that we have done it's very clear it's no, it's substantiated there is evidence that financial obstacles are often identified as a major factor for the reason why women cannot and I know women are not a homogeneous group so I'm talking about women with all their different identities in comparison to men also who are not a homogeneous group in relation to also their different identities women often have less access to resources than men and we have found like for instance if I can cite the publication or knowledge resource that we have put together which is titled gender public funding gender targeted public funding for political parties it is very clear and we know from even the examples that we are articulating here pertaining to Southeast Asia and the world over just to be able to present yourself as a candidate to identify yourself as a candidate for the political party nomination and that is also another complicated field the internal party democracy processes on the identification nomination and selection of candidates which has become very commercialized and we see the world over that a lot of women most of the women, the majority of women do not have the same amount and access to resources in order to even just consider themselves to be political party candidates and in cases where that can happen where some have the resources you also even find that political parties tend to nominate men to winnable positions so that they can also continue to benefit from the resources that men have at their disposal so the leveling playing field in its totality if it's going to be effective in terms of making sure that at least 50% of the world population who identify as women are also included in politicians of power and decision making the leveling of the playing field in terms of the regulatory frameworks that we have about it to the regulatory frameworks on political finance across the world there's need to start questioning the extent to which these regulatory frameworks are indeed gender sensitive and they promote gender equality and women's empowerment in politics mind you it is not just about politics only but we know that these aspects are interconnected so what happens with regards to economic empowerment measures and policies and strategies on economic empowerment will of course ultimately affect what happens in terms of having access to political financing and resources for campaigning therefore the leveling playing field issue really has to be broadened and strengthened just to make sure it guarantees access participation and representation at this point I think a lot of what is happening is about women just participating in politics but their participation not being translated into meaningful and effective representation that is having women in these positions of power and decision making and as I have cited from the onset political financing and access to financial resources is one of the major obstacles that prevents women from accessing positions of power and decision making at all levels and any leveling of the playing field really has to be that inclusive it really has to be gender sensitive and drive their gender for women's political empowerment as much as women to participate and be represented in positions of decision making Thank you very much I hear that the initiatives to improve women's political participation particularly pertaining to the use of money has to come from all factors and all sections including political parties themselves or via public funding there are private initiatives but the idea is as a society we need to up our game if we really want more women in politics and enable them to play meaningful role in politics Thank you very much for that very apt intervention Rumbi and again we have been talking a lot about public funding gender targeted public funding and Daisy particularly spoke about the use of public funding so some countries in Southeast Asia just like other countries around the world they provide public funding to political parties however there is not much research on the effectiveness of public funding in your opinion does public funding really work in reducing political parties reliance on private donations what are your experiences or what the studies from Southeast Asia tell you about that Thank you very much I think this is a very very good question whether or not public funding can really make a difference to reduce dependence to corruption to reduce instances of soliciting illegal funding for political parties actually the answer it really depends on the situation of each countries itself so basically I can say for Indonesia's case up until 2019 I think the amount of public funding or state subsidy is quite dismal it's only 108 rupiah per vote garnered by a political party so it's a 7.6 USD per vote up until 2019 and in 2019 the government made a new law made a new agreement then it was increased 10 fold it became 1000 rupiahs per vote so it's quite 10 fold almost 10 fold around 70 70 cent USD so it means that for example the biggest party in Indonesia PDIP they won 23 million votes in 2014 which means they will have 23 billion rupiahs for state subsidies it's a huge amount for us from outside we feel like oh it's a lot of money but actually it doesn't even cover half of the party's annual funding necessity so still then the party would have to look for sources of other funding sources and mostly parties in Indonesia would ask money from political party members who are holding public office or who have a seat in the parliament so the amount can be 15% to 40% of the salary would go to the party so that's actually one of the biggest item in the political parties of funding source in Indonesia so for Indonesia I think it is respect towards something good because public funding could reduce reliance on illegal sources reliance on donation from oligarchs I actually don't really like to use this word very lightly so big businesses also to reduce the of the parties towards big businesses but again like I said so far the Indonesian political party budget report the report of income and expenditures have not been done correctly even on the state subsidy that was very dismo so you can imagine how blurry it is for the non-state subsidy sources so I think do you think public funding is good for political parties but the most important thing again is the accountability it's the report it's the auditing of the report and it is the opening for public scrutiny that is very important so political financing can be really making a difference especially for the quality of democracy thank you very much Desi that was very interesting and you talked a lot about the issues of compliance and implementation something that obviously we will be talking about but at a later stage because right now I want to who is the co-author of the introductory chapter in the publication that we are launching today political party finance reform in Southeast Asia Yuki, can you share some of the key findings presented in the paper particularly pertaining to Southeast Asia of course, thanks for the question so this report that has just been launched today international idea has a fortunate to contribute a chapter to provide a comparative assessment so in this short paper what we did actually to look at the legal framework of those four countries concerned and the respect project but also benchmark the results against the more regional and global context so we also look at the global standard and then the scores in the southeastern region at large so that intentions to place those four countries vis-à-vis global standard and then through this very interesting exercise we identified several very common similar challenges led into political finance I think some of the challenges are already being touched by the Daisy and Andreas and Rubitair as well but it's always nice to repeat the very important message so allow me and there are three three messages I'd like to convey to respond to your questions one is the clear legislative shortcomings in across all those regulations in four countries as well as in some cases absence of regulation entirely so the case of Malaysia is a case in point there's no dedicated political finance laws at all in a country currently and certainly is a major issue this we like a country to consider introducing a framework to frame the inference of mining politics but even for the other three countries and although there are some sort of political finance regulations in place and our assessment sort of identifies there are still certain loopholes or shortcomings and that makes them rather incomplete and some of the examples that I like to mention is one is the regulation relating to self funding for example candidates are political parties funding their own campaigns in terms of regulation around that in Southeast Asia it's rather unregulated area the same goes to taking loans by political parties whereas this is a rather well-regulated area in other world other parts of the world this is rather untouched as well as also commercial activities undertaken by political parties and then revenues raised by from such businesses again I'm not to say this is the wrong exercise to say but the regulation needs to be definitely in place to make sure there's a transparency in accountability in political parties business operations and then revenues raised from such activities but it's rather untouched in many regulations in Southeast Asia and again that really underscore sort of the tight business government relations that are mentioned by the other speakers as well and then also when it comes to the second challenges it's the issue of implementation I think DZ uses the word accountability but I think of what I'm trying to get at is more of the same so the regulations are there and also in almost all countries there's one or more public body that responsible for political finance oversight but we keep seeing the recurring scandals or arranged political finance misconduct and that points to the fact that probably those oversight agencies are not necessarily sufficiently staffed to conduct meaning for oversight or lack political independence or mandate or one of those combination of those factors and then also when it comes to implementation we also identify the lack of reliable data is also difficulties or obstacle for anyone to make objective decision even there was impacted our research to conduct this paper as well and when you look at those data I mean it's very difficult to have very reliable data sets in relation to for example the number of sanctions applied to misconduct or compliance rate of political parties submitting political finance reports or oversight agencies in time for example or how much of the political finance reports disclose in a set timeframe for example and without those what we call in data or evidence it's actually very difficult to measure the effectiveness of the functioning of the political finance systems in place so as well as closing regulatory legislative loopholes focusing on implementation and also start developing liable indicators to measure monitor and measure the effectiveness of the regulations in place that exercise currently quite weak in Asia in Southeast Asia in particular and also lastly the point I want to make is also some of the reason that the slow progress in political finance reform is sometimes also due to the lack of capacity on the political parties side as well they may have a political ability to comply regulations but they may lack sufficient expertise to conduct meaningful or accurate bookkeeping practices for example so in that case that also underscores a need to provide more capacity building training to political parties particularly those who are new or smaller parties they may lack sufficient sort of capacities on their end to comply with political finance regulations and there many more and then also there are some emerging challenges that I like to touch on but yeah these are the very quick glance some of the key findings that I think is worth mentioning here, thanks Thank you very much Yuki so much food for thought and so many issues to discuss but we will hopefully reach all those questions at some stage but you raised very important issue of transparency and accountability which definitely is very important but I would like to ask now Andreas to please highlight what do we mean by transparency and accountability and how can that be enhanced, how can transparency and accountability be enhanced when it comes to the issues of political finance in Southeast Asia Okay this question is relate to the other question whether there are regulatory loopholes and what can we do against it and Yuki already said there are so many problems concerning political finance in Southeast Asia, election commissions are usually not really powerful but politically controlled or understaffed corruption eradication commissions are weak there's lacking protection of whistleblowers misuse of state owned corporations or state resources in general financial reports are incomplete, there's no real oversight and sanctioning non existent so I would say that all these loopholes show that political elites are very smart in circumventing regulations and in creating actively regulations and not really be implemented effectively because of all that reforms are very difficult I think only during critical junctures when opposition by political parties is strong and combined with civil society activities it is possible to push through fundamental reform like constitutional reforms in Thailand in 1997 or a range of reforms in Indonesia in the early 2000s and I think now there's a very good chance that the whole party finance system, you mentioned it already in Malaysia that's non existent currently it could be overhauled I think this is necessary because there are almost no regulations and they are well they can easily circumvent the few regulations that exist but now in Malaysia a party opposition is very strong and the current new government is under pressure to come to terms with the opposition coalition and just yesterday and today came with these confident and supply agreements that means for the first time in Malaysian history the opposition and the governing coalition work very closely and well they start to politically reform the whole polity hopefully we do not yet know and we have to have in mind that the whole reform process in Malaysia started I think in the mid 2000s and the most important civil society actor at this time maybe until today is thirsty the movement for clean elections so we see that reforms are probable but especially if there are former or maybe informal coalitions between opposition and civil society actors and then even the political finance system could be reformed fundamentally I would say Thank you very much Anders and I'll continue with you as a follow up question to what you said and what also you keep mentioning about both the capacity of the oversight agencies as well as their independence which of course is a very important balance to strike but what is the problem here in the region are there other oversight bodies not independent enough are they not capacitated enough or do they not have enough resources to carry out their mandate what exactly is the problem that we are talking about here in terms of implementation of the regulations and how the capacities andres that question was for you as a follow up I thought excuse me sorry could you repeat the question yes sure you mention a little bit about the capacities of oversight agencies and the independence thereof I just wanted to ask you as a follow up question to your intervention on what is the problem in the region are the oversight bodies not independent enough capacities and what kind of capacities they could use for instance yeah I could again point at the type of regime if you have electoral authoritarian system then of course these oversight agencies are not really powerful because the ruling elites have no interest to strengthen these agencies and well we could now talk about different countries in Malaysia you have the election commission that is under control of the prime minister and in Indonesia you have different oversight agencies but I think they are understaffed and they are not really able to function well I wouldn't know about East Timor but I guess it's more or less the same these agencies are usually understaffed and at the same time the court system in many of these countries is well maybe not fully independent and so that means there are usually no strong sanctions I know in Thailand there were sometimes they would ban whole parties but this instrument again was politicized and maybe not part of a well functioning political finance system but in Indonesia and Malaysia oversight and sanctioning as far as I know very weak Thank you very much Andreas Rumi, now I will ask the next question to you you highlighted the challenges women face in accessing finance to run campaigns or run for office but for sure there must be some good examples and good practices that we can all learn from from across the world or even from the region in how money can be made accessible for women who wants to run for office sure, yeah sure definitely kushu it's not like there are no efforts whatsoever there are some efforts but also remaining mindful of the fact that it's what we are seeing the progress is very slow and uneven across the world because these efforts if I may build upon what I was saying earlier on it cannot be one size fit all and also it's not going to be effective if we have fragmented or ad hoc measures the issues pertaining to gender equality and women's empowerment so interconnected interconnected in terms of the socialization the social constructs the perceptions and attitudes towards women's leadership men's leadership and the entire set up as I said of our patriarchal systems that then have a profound effect on the political party systems what happens within political parties in the electoral systems and having said that indeed their countries where if we look at what we have on the political finance database from the data that we have for 180 countries it shows that 70% of those 180 countries receive some form of public funding political parties for their activities and out of those 70% only 17% no 17% of the countries have gender targeted measures the examples that we can cite for instance are countries such as Finland is actually regarded as one of the countries in the first countries in the world in 1974 when they ensured that a certain proportion of public funding is earmarked to activities that target transformation it wasn't just about ensuring that a certain number of women get into positions of power and decision making through the political parties intra-party democracy processes but it was broad transformation of attitudes so the public funding is there to ensure that there is gender equality so broadly it will not just be political parties say we have a certain number of women but also what is that they do their practices, their attitudes the way of life from a gender equality perspective we also have countries such as France France introduced gender targeted measures like in 2000 but if we look at the region where for instance a country such as Timor-Lester where the gender targeted funding is connected and linked to compliance with gender quotas and there are several countries that have that measure in place where gender quotas compliance is a requirement in order to be included in the ballot and also then to be eligible for public funding that is happening in Timor-Lester as I've mentioned it's happening in South Korea it's happening in Bolivia it's happening in Mongolia in Belgium in Costa Rica, in Spain in Argentina but as I said at the onset Koshu the efforts are still very minimal and they are in a few countries so if we take the entire political finance database that we have it only shows that as of 2020 only 30 countries across the world have some measures on gender targeted funding in order to transform attitudes or support the activities of gender equality and women's empowerment but that's only 30% of the countries on the political finance database out of the 180 countries yet we know of the 180 countries at least 70% have access to public funding why is it it's 70% and then 17% for gender targeted measures, why can't it just be 70-70 if any country has provisions for political parties to have access to public funding which comes from public resources and the requirements that have already been articulated for accountability and reporting why is that provision for gender equality not mainstreamed all these public funding legal frameworks and political parties accessing the funding from the government why is it not done the same in order to ensure gender equality and women's empowerment so the efforts are there there are several other countries as well even like Sweden, for instance Sweden to ensure that a lot of the gender targeted funding goes to the women's swing and I'm mentioning women's swings here because I know several countries in Southeast Asia and across the different regions of the world political parties have established women's swings so we need to start also paying close attention to the functions and role of those women swings are they meant to be conduits for ensuring that women can get into positions of power in decision making or they just do the hospitality function in the political parties, saving drinks and preparing food and ensuring that the decor for the political party meetings is in order so it's a combination like I say it's a combination the gender quotas are there they have to be reinforced with gender targeted public funding they also have them to be reinforced by transformation of attitudes and perspectives and perceptions which then relates to another component of the media because that has also a role to play thank you Koshu thank you very much Rumbi and again you touched upon an issue that Daisy was discussing as well that while public funding can be effective we also need to look at how it is allocated and how it is distributed and this also reflects on how it eventually also leads to more women in politics so thank you very much for that Daisy now I'll go to you PR Preludium which is based in Indonesia we have a lot of audience tuning in from Indonesia and I'm very sure that they're interested in this topic on political finance in Indonesian context so I want to ask what are the unique circumstances and specific challenges that Indonesia is facing in its quest to reform political party finance thank you very much Roshu I think a lot of the audience know more than me about this actually but at the risk of saying something everybody already know so we know that political parties especially in a large country like Indonesia is in need of massive massive financial sources to finance their activities also to basically to just survive in in the political competition even outside of electoral period financing their organizational structural necessities to finance educational programs we call this also in bahasa kandarisasi recruitment and training of new caters and also organizational consolidation involving national regional down to their village level of branches and structures however there is also a lack of regulations which constitute a major challenge if this matter we have law number 2 2008 and law number 2 2011 regulating political party finance but some of the stipulations inside the laws are a bit ambiguous there like I mentioned before there's lack of what's the mechanism for accountability we are only obliged to make annual budget reports but the reports are for example audited by their own auditor there's no access for public scrutiny and there's also a lack of sanction basically for violation of regulations and I think Andreas also mentioned about the weak how do you call that so so those are the things that are lacking in Indonesia actually the laws regulated party financing has several sources membership fees member donation private donation and state subsidy like I said before membership fees at least until 2019 2019 there was a 10-fold increase in the state subsidy but the lack of public finance for the political parties make political parties trying to offset the cost by illegal sources by soliciting illegal donations or getting money from members who are in the parliament or who have public office so basically those are what is happening in Indonesia there's another thing in Indonesia Andreas also mentioned there are several oversight institutions for example the general election commission and election supervisory general election commission KPU national supervisory body election supervisory body by Waslu the state auditors and the national police so therefore but there's really no regulation who holds the principal responsibility for investigating and imposing sanctions in Indonesia so when there's a breach of regulation they are waiting for each other so there's really no special designation the national police goes first so there's no such thing as that so it would be great going forward if Indonesia could think about designating one specific what's that oversight institution to take this responsibility and there's also a lack I mean this is my observation there's also a lack of partnership with watchdogs it is important watchdogs are very important especially when in regional level there's really no interaction between countries in Southeast Asia we all know ASEAN is a consensus based organization so there will not be any well it's unlikely there's going to be a regional level common mechanism for political finance reform so not like OECD or not like what's that the open government partnership or something like that so so the partnership between watchdogs and oversight institutions are very important and that's actually still lacking in Indonesia but it's actually very important for watchdogs to be to be more active here because watchdogs especially the internationally structured one like international idea or transparency international they can talk to each other at digital level so it's very important that's what is lacking in Indonesia at the moment but there is already discourse of adding to the public finance which is a very good discourse even to the number even amount to 6 trillion rupiah in 2023 so that's actually something that is we are excited about but also we are very wary about how the accountability process is going to be because it's a huge amount of money and it needs to be handled very properly yeah that's it thank you very much you raised a very important point that just in political independence and capacity of oversight bodies is not sufficient they also need a clear mandate to do their functions thank you very much for that and Yuki, now I want to come to you you mentioned you wanted to talk about some emerging challenges so in the report, in the paper that you co-authored, you have also highlighted some of the emerging challenges that the region should start thinking about or is already facing would you be able to highlight some of those issues of course there have already been many points raised by speakers and I really love to dig each one of them much deeper but for the interest of time and also a bit of the emerging issues that we believe that's going to be an issue in the Southeast Asia as well I'll briefly mention about three issues as emerging or some of them actually being around for a little while so it could be considered a persisting challenge possibly but one is the definitely the issue of third party campaigning so for those who are not familiar we often identify the third parties as the campaigners but neither political parties nor candidates so often those third party groups include supposedly independent research foundations or in some cases stimulus society groups or faith groups in some times but in some cases oftentimes those third party groups when election times comes they pour quite large amount of resources into campaigns and in favor of or in opposition to a certain candidates of political parties and their voice or their campaign often have a very significant bearing on the outcome of the elections so in this context we believe there are certain regulations particularly spending limit so third party campaigners could spend during election campaigns should be subject to some level of regulation but the third party campaigning is rather new areas in many part of the world and when we look at the Southeast Asia certainly it's very untouched I consider definitely this area it needs further investigation and necessary updating the provisions corresponding to their spending and then also second area is very fitting and very timely in times of the pandemic that we are all in is that many aspects of political finance practices from raising donations to receiving donations to reporting financial reports and disclosing political finance reports have become increasingly digital in many countries in the world if you think about it especially due to the social distancing protocols placed in many countries political parties cannot hold regular rarities for example and in many countries for example political parties start utilizing crowdfunding sites or introducing some sort of mobile apps to correct small donations for example equally many political parties and candidates are spending quite large amounts of financial resources online advertisements through social media platforms for example but however these technologies definitely has a lot of positives they reach out to grassroots level borders relatively cheap way of political parties they engage with larger amounts of orders which is great however if used intentionally but without the correct supervision could easily circumvent existing regulations for example many countries have ban on anonymous donations or ban on donations coming from foreign sources but the current lack of transparency surrounding for example online advertisements we are not actually know who's actually paying for certain advertisements or can we consider it as a in-kind donation from donors and how do we have to deal with it how do we report it in financial reports so it's still a very new area as we speak and many oversight agencies we spoke and are struggling to regulate how best to increase transparency in this area because often it's not just only the responsibility the agency requires a cooperation of private companies as well so it's not easy task to do but however we only see this digitalization trend will only continue to grow in the future so certainly this is an issue that we all need to collectively tackle then third a challenge that I would like to mention it's somewhat similar to what Daisy mentioned as well she mentioned the struggles and difficulties of inter-agency cooperation so often when you look at countries there are few competing or overrapping agencies that have a very similar mandate when it comes to political finance but often sometimes issues fall in between agencies and they're not really touched by any single government agency I mean this has been a long standing problem but issues like digitalization has actually add another layer of difficulties on top of that for example so if you consider other countries issues relating to digitalization or information integrity this often lies with the responsibility of information commissioner or department of media and public information those are traditionally an actors that are not really active in the area of political finance regulation but because the surroundings are changing so rapidly there is a way there is a definite need for oversight agencies to develop some sort of the inter-agency cooperation or mechanism to allow them to exchange information more easily and then also cooperate as an one basis mechanism is currently lacking in many countries and in addition to that I just need to highlight that also political finance is definitely one main area for corruption as all the speakers mentioned but we also need to be very realistic in a sense to realize and acknowledge just implementing political finance regulation is not going to be effective to mitigate the risk of money in politics i mean there are certainly other avenues to influence politics by using big money for example public procurement system is often identified as one of those risk areas or is there effective role being regulations in the country for example you know the way political interactions initiated by the corporations is a subjective regulation you know so in addition to inter-agency cooperation it's also important to consider placing political finance regulation in a much broader anti-corruption strategy so connecting political finance with other issues such as already mentioned by panellists for example with soboro protections or connecting it with other measures for example asset disclosure mechanism that's often done in place in Southeast Asia but those data actually make it compatible or connecting those data sets for example to make oversight more effective for example so connecting political finance with larger anti-corruption efforts is also a challenge and a task ahead for all countries in Southeast Asia actually Thank you very much Yuki for writing very important issues that globally but at the same time also very relevant to the region including the issue of online campaign financing which is bound to grow it has already grown by leaps and bounds especially during the times of COVID and it's going to grow even further so thank you very much for sharing those insights I just want to remind our audience that we are nearly at the end of the formal questions and answers round so please write a question in the Q&A chat box or if you want to directly ask a question please raise your hand so that we can moderate I have just a couple of more questions for the panelists but we are very very excited to hear from our audience itself you can use the Q&A chat I have a question which chat box should be used so please use the Q&A chat box Andreas Daisy mentioned the need for regional cooperation Yuki juga bercakap tentang interagency collaboration You have worked in the academy for very long you have worked in think tank for quite a bit what role do you think think tanks or international organizations or academy can play in bridging this divide that we face in terms of data Yuki was mentioning that there is no reliable data oftentimes that can be used for evidence based advocacy or evidence based policy reform so what role do you think can we play as academia or as think tanks Well I think we need different types of research we still need the research that already exists for example in your report on political party finance reform in Southeast Asia one finds very valuable data on expenses for very different activities and items for example details on regulations and their effects on the costs of election campaigns I think we still of course need all this I'm thinking of the articles I have read on Indonesia and on Malaysia in this report and well that is very helpful but we all know that this is of course not sufficient I think we could need more comparative studies in order to identify best practices for example how could we use state funding in an effective way are there good examples in other countries and if there are are they transferable to other countries and then it was just mentioned that we may should not only focus on political finance and all these regulations but you have to see the bigger picture that means the political economy of party politics of electioneering in general that means we need to know more about for example the donors who donates what are the linkages between politicians and business people under which circumstances do they work who are actually the people behind parties and candidates I mean if I think about Indonesia we mostly hear rumors but we do not really know who for example has financed the campaign of presidential candidates for example I don't want to mention names so we need research on the political economy going beyond political finance the problem is that it is very difficult to analyze it is very difficult to really interview these people and then Yuki already mentioned a lot of this there are many new issues we need more research pertaining to new social media for example the use of crypto currencies that has been mentioned in your report the organization of black campaigning on the internet the employment of buzzers or in Malaysia they are called cyber troopers the role of spin doctors and survey institutes and third party campaigners that was just mentioned new forms of fundraising or the role of voluntary supporters so I think the campaigns are currently changing tremendously in the whole region and maybe we also need new times of regulations new forms of oversight you need independent agencies able to observe different activities on the internet and of course we need research and all that thank you for this comprehensive response and a lot of things to think about how we can continue working on generating more data which we can then eventually use for advocacy and reform purposes my final question is for Rumbi which has also been raised by one of our participants about the use of political finance to improve political participation of marginalized groups Rumbi you talked a lot about women's political participation in the political finance can play as an equalizer what about other groups other marginalized groups such as people living with disabilities LGBTI groups or young people or other minorities how can public finance play an important role in bringing more people from these groups into politics i think a lot needs to be done i think what i've explained with relation to women now you need to think of it when it comes to other marginalized groups people living with disabilities or people are differently abled or people from non-binary people or different ethnic backgrounds or all the different multiple identities so you can actually imagine that as we as it is right now not much has been done in terms of earmarking public funding to address the issues of inclusion of marginalized groups we've just told a lot on women as a particular segment but you need to take we need to look at the same principles again because it's about re-addressing the underrepresentation of different segments in our populations and of course addressing the issue of overrepresentation of one segment of the populations therefore we still see that a lot has not been done in relation to the other marginalized groups if at all we have challenges for instance if I can mention the youth across the world one of the issues and major obstacle that they face is the lack of access to financial resources for campaigning and we have cross cutting dimensions when we are talking about the youth men living with disabilities or from different ethnic and religious backgrounds and until and unless as I mentioned before the efforts that we put in place with regards to public funding implemented in a very holistic approach not piecemeal or just targeting one particular aspect because we say we provide political funding to political parties why not in the funding of those political parties include all the different criterias that need to be covered for instance if we setting up political parties they probably in a number of context that political parties shouldn't be non discriminatory they should be inclusive and why should we not even have legal frameworks and provisions that expand on those components what does it mean so it's not just about not discriminating against women but not discriminating against people who are differently abled non binary people or different people or youth and then we specify how public funding specific needs of different segments of the population in order to address the representation gap without necessarily stepping up those measures to be as holistic as I am outlining we will still find that the initiatives will solve one aspect but then they don't really go the long haul of dealing with the issues of sustaining the interventions ultimately I think our principles if we are looking at what we are putting forward in this webinar are issues of what's the whole argument around the 2030 agenda leave no one behind so how do we use political finance or regulatory frameworks for manning politics to be inclusive and not just inclusive and right now and you in a better place to speak to that with all the information that we have on our political finance database not much has been done beyond even the minimal reflections that I have shared just regarding women so you can imagine about the other multiple identities that people carry nothing much has been done and this is a challenge that we have to step up to across the different parts of the world and in the region as well in Southeast Asia Thank you so much Roombie and very rightly said that there is very little that has been done but our fight will continue and we will work together with stakeholders to do more research and collect evidence on what works what is missing and what needs to be done so thank you very much for that and I hope that the question posed by our audience Kafi Adlan Hafeez was answered with Roombie's intervention thank you very much Kafi for that question now we formally end the question and answer round but we are taking questions from audience and we already have received several questions and my next question is from U.S. Kinawas and he has raised his hand so he probably would like to recording in progress so could we give the mic to U.S. Kinawas please I think you will type his questions I think there might be some technical issue with his mic so I will read the question that has been given by U.S. it is for either Yuki if you are Andreas either of you can take this question he is talking about that in many impact countries detecting and monitoring the movement of money is a perennial problem could you talk a bit more about the variation in the region regarding states ability to monitor the money movement does it correlate with the country's quality of democracy Andreas perhaps you can take this question yeah but maybe Yuki can add of course in detail I could talk about Malaysia Malaysia is the most flaring example where hundreds of millions of dollars came as a donation from somebody of Saudi Arabian monarchy that's at least what the prime minister former prime minister Najib Razak said and well the impression is that in 2018 where the movement of money was not really a control and it was more a kind of private affair of those members of the political elite who were interested to use one MDB money for different reasons but well detecting and monitoring the movement of money in Indonesia or the Philippines I can only imagine that this will also be difficult and that of course there is a connection to the type of regime I mean the more democratic a regime is the better is the monitoring usually I would say but Yuki maybe you can add Yuki yes please Thanks Andreas I think this is like one of those million dollar questions really it's very hard to answer No but I try to be concise but I like to give you concrete practices that other countries adapt First of all this program is particularly difficult in a cash based society like many parts of Asia I'm talking about tracking the money in politics because of course all the money instead of given under the table is very hard to be detected and especially at local level in Southeast Asia one cannot expect people to use credit cards or bank transfer to make donations so that's often the root cause of it as well but if you were to speak a little bit more global trend and how other countries are trying to increase transparency in the flow of money and then increase the VT to track financial resources one is definitely mandating or requesting donors to use bank transfer so that the trace will be identified very easily digitally but also and then this especially in the Europe North America I mean this has become a very prominent feature rather than accepting cash but asking donors to use wire transfer to political parties or again also in relation to this and again the other alternative is to strengthening the law and requiring the disclosure provisions and for example not only donor identities to be required but I think that's the main issue and in some countries that even require the political parties to disclose their donor details I think that's very important to have certain transparency as to who's giving money to which political party but also for example beneficial ownership that's another issue for example so many corporations provide donations to political parties but if the public cannot know who actually owns that corporations it's again it's very difficult for the CSO and media and then other citizens alike to really understand who's trying to influence the public decisions making and then also by knowing who's giving the donations to political parties we can also link that information to for example other such as public procurement information so that we can see if there's a correlation if the big donors giving donation to political parties they're more likely to receive public contracts after the election for example so then we can really close the cycle of the flow of money in politics so really requiring transparency is one major step forward and then the second is if there is any sort of IT infrastructure in place or good level of internet penetration across society making aspects, some aspects of oversight of political finance a little bit more digital it certainly gives you a little bit more corruption proof so to say although it's not perfect but certainly it's better than the paper based oversight and implementation Thank you Thank you very much Andreas and Yuki both for your very insightful remarks and I hope you have received your answer. Our next question is from Ika Priyar Yanni and it is she's posing it to all speakers what is the most effective way to regulate political finance, is it through laws or through government regulations, electoral regulation or political party regulation what are other country experiences and what could be relevant for Indonesia perhaps Daisy would like to answer this question and any other panelist please feel free to join in with your response as well So basically in Southeast Asia each countries have their own political party laws more than one actually in case of Malaysia and in Indonesia I don't know central actually so I think the legal framework the laws are very important but also what is more important is the it's the willingness of the political parties to abide by it well so capacity for oversight agencies to monitor the implementation of the law and also for the national police to be able to sanction or punish political parties that are not doing things in accordance to the law so law is very important but what I said also the most important thing is also the willingness it's something that is more than obeying the law but also something that the political parties themselves are willing to really abide by what is correct or political governance that are correct and so as to ensure political financing to be clean to have a quality of democracy that is sustainable that's also for Indonesia thank you, thank you very much Daisy yes Rumi, please I just want to build on what Daisy had said because the question whether it's the law or the regulations and electoral regulation or political party regulation in fact it's a combination of all these aspects that the participant has asked because to regulate political financing isolation we need also to connect it to what is happening within the political party regulations if for instance issues of accountability and transparency are not anchored in the political party regulations or in the conduct of political parties or the conduct of politics in the DNA of politics in a country even if we regulate political finance with very strict laws it might work but as Daisy was saying you find that in the long term because there is no political will and it's not connected to several aspects so we cannot separate the issues political party regulation electoral processes regulations political finance regulations all those aspects need to be combined because they have an impact on each other and I think one of the aspects that could also come out very clearly in this discussion in relation to this question is even the regulation on access to media who gets access to media in time during the campaigning and which type of media and what media are they using of course we know there is so much happening in terms of online campaigning and under the online campaigning issue we see also the dynamics that are playing out on increased violence against women online which is very difficult to regulate and track to a certain extent so these aspects are interconnected we need to look at all the different dimensions and the relations that it has ultimately in whether the integrity of money in politics can be sustained Thank you so much Rumi and a very apt way to put a close to our question and answer round since we don't have anymore the idea that we cannot work in isolation everything is interconnected and this has been an issue that has been raised consistently about the role of different parties or different agencies about interagency coordination the role of CSOs how issue of political finance has to be put into a broader option agenda and how it has to be mentioned and addressed in every regulation pertaining to parties or finance or elections so thank you very much for that insight with this we come to the closure of question and answer round since we don't have any but if any of the speakers would like to give a closing remark or to add anything in what we have discussed today I open the floor for you at the moment so any of you Yuki, Andrea, Stacey or Rumi Yes, Andrea, let's go first No, Andrea, space Eka, ask for any suggestion for Indonesia and I think we talked a lot about this interdependence of regulations and laws and so on if you give money to political parties via public funding ask them to really report their expenses and ask them to introduce intra-party democracy and transparency otherwise no money that would be a simple reform and I think it could work quite well Thank you, thank you very much, Andrea Yuki, over to you and also I can't agree with all the things said by all the parties analysts as well but if I were to mention one key takeaway from this panel is just the implementation because except the case of Malaysia but in most countries political finance laws are in place and I don't think necessarily one law is better than the other as long as certain regulations are there I think in my opinion it's better than none but the problem is that laws are not really complied so that goes back to some of the points we already raised so that capacity and political independence and the legal mandate of oversight agencies that really needs to be strengthened significantly in Southeast Asia if you want to see some improvement in transparency and accountability in money in politics because also I might just want to leave one interesting case is that overshooting the program after those are not always effective either I mean if you consider for example a country like Sweden where international ideas headquarters are situated in fact political finance is very loosely regulated I mean there's no many dedicated laws to require political parties to act one way or the other however better or worse at least perceived level corruption based on transparencies international corruption perception index so to say Nordic countries always appear to rank very highly in the ranking as compared to the Southeast Asia countries so it's not just about introducing laws after laws but it's more often about you know whether transparency is provided to either a political party or access to information law freedom of information act or the oversight agencies have enough capacity to really implement what they have already so the implementation is the key I think that's one message that I like the audience to take away from this panel Thank you very much Yuki I think a very relevant and apt key message that we should all take away with us Anything anybody else would like to add Daisy any other points you'd like to make before I close the panel for today alright so we are good it was such a rich discussion I am sure our audience has benefitted from it as much as I have and I have absolutely enjoyed moderating this session I just want to again remind our audience that the report that we are launching today or have launched today can be accessed on Preludance website the link has already been put in the chat box as well in addition Preludance has a number of relevant publication that could help you understand the political finance regimes in Southeast Asia they have a journal that they publish semi-annually which can also be accessed on the website additionally international idea has a host of resources including the political finance database as well as numerous publications on the issue so please log into the website as well to benefit which resources that have been produced by both these institutions on my behalf I thank all the panelists and our participants for their very active engagement and now I would like to hand the floor to Teresia Joyce she is the chief of party of respect program being led by Preludem and with her remarks we will close the session Teresia the floor is yours Thank you Mr. Honorable guest Mr. Dr. Hiko Hamada Mr. Andrea Suvan Mrs. Rumbitsai Mrs. Desi Semenjunta our moderator Hizbu Agrawal representative of USAID and our partners organizations thank you so much for your support in this international conference political party financing is notoriously difficult to monitor and I really appreciate for the shared analysis and touch during this conference to understand and to examine the challenges of political party financing today is part of significant stages of the process have been gone by Lente, Bersih, Perludem, Pradet Women Calculus also the international idea to support the integrity of electoral and political processes today together with them we won't emphasize once again about the importance to support every efforts to strengthen and reform political party finance system as Koyeri Nisa mention in the opening today is also a point of departure that tomorrow and for the next upcoming weeks we will have four more conferences in the form of multi-stakeholders conferences hosted by Lente organizations from Philippines, Perludem from Indonesia, Pradet and Women Calculus from Timur Lese also Bersih from Malaysia its conference we will discuss further about the research findings in its country and recommendations which we expect will be able to lead adoption of significant standards for the setting up of transparent systems for political party financing these four conferences also will mark the beginning of advocacy program in its perspective targeted countries which few of these countries will have their elections in the next coming years I may convey here that the whole program of political party finance supported by respect program is also a tribute to the political parties individual politicians scholars democratic activists and civil society in Southeast Asia region who understand the devastating effect of political corruption and who do their best to have a healthy democracy Lastly, I would thank you again to Perludem and the international idea that have made this conference possible and confirm that party finance reform is well worth pursuing Thank you and I give the forum back to you first Thank you very much Teresia Joyce for reminding all of us that we have to continue this conversation Recording in progress Continue in the next four sessions that will be launching the regional or the country specific reports Thank you very much for your remark Thank you everybody for joining in today We appreciate you taking time and listening to the deliberations and thinking of this very important issue of political finance reform in the region Thank you again, have a very good day Good evening, good night Very well Bye