Extensification of Corporate Crimes Against Political Parties for Undercover Campaigns in Places of Worship

Abstract

The practice of covert campaigning in places of worship constitutes an exploitation of sacred spaces that undermines the integrity and substantive justice of general elections. Law enforcement under the current Election Law regime faces a structural deadlock due to the overly rigid application of the lex stricta principle, which can only prosecute implementers, participants, and campaign teams officially registered with the General Election Commission. Consequently, cases involving covert campaign actors outside these three legal subjects are frequently dismissed, thus breeding impunity for political party elites who factually profit from such covert maneuvers. This article aims to reconstruct criminal liability in elections by shifting the enforcement paradigm toward the conception of corporate criminal offenses based on Law Number 1 of 2023 concerning the Criminal Code (KUHP 2023). Employing a normative legal research method with statutory and conceptual approaches, the study confirms that political parties fulfill the qualifications as subjects of corporate criminal offenses. Maneuvers by covert campaign actors do not nullify the criminal offense; Rather, they are constructed as acts committed by third parties acting on behalf of the corporation, in this context, the political party. The attribution of malicious intent (mens rea) is established through the construction of the offense of omission (tacit consent), where in the political party is proven to unlawfully enjoy electoral benefits without undertaking preventive measures. Integrating this corporate criminal architecture serves as a condition sine qua non to resolve the electoral law deadlock and exact layered criminal liability extending to the apex of the political party hierarchy.