MONEY POLITICS IN GENERAL ELECTIONS :A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

This article is intended to compare and see the differences and similarities between money politics in Indonesia and Malaysia. Corruption in the electoral process is a breach of public trust and an illegal act. Enforcing the legal framework is essential to maintain electoral integrity. Without enforcement, the best legal framework or electoral systems can be bypassed or ignored. We can notice several characteristics of bribery, (i) committed by one who gives or promises or offers money or any valuable inducement to an electoror (ii) in order to corruptly induce the latter to vote in a particular wayor (iii) to abstain from votingor (iv) as a reward to the voter for having voted in a particular way or abstain from voting. It can be stated that the arrangement of bribery in Indonesia is very brief compared to its arrangement in Malaysia. The substance of the offences has been contained in the general elections laws in Indonesia and Malaysia. However, the number, the types and the scopes of the election offences in these two countries are different from one another. The general election legal frameworks in Indonesia and Malaysia have elaborated punishment for certain viola¬tions of law. The legal framework in these two countries has attempted to ensure the fairness of elections, which required a number of technical and legal measures designed effectively to protect the process from bias, fraud or manipulation. Such measures included, inter alia, provisions for outlawing and punishing corrupt practices. Keywords money politics, bribery, general elections, democracy, crim