Foreigners fathered RI's graft<\/p>\n
By Donna K. Woodward<\/p>\n
MEDAN (JP): Indonesia is a country often at the top of the
\nworld's lists of the most corrupt countries. Why?<\/p>\n
Is Indonesian culture innately and inevitably corrupt?<\/p>\n
Contrary to this popular but superficial view, corruption is
\nnot an endemic part of Indonesia's culture or character.<\/p>\n
Indonesians too are appalled and ashamed by the magnitude of
\ncorruption here. To blame corruption on the culture allows
\nexpatriates to feel morally superior, and culturally superior, to
\nIndonesians.<\/p>\n
Blaming corruption on the culture also makes it easy for
\nIndonesians to absolve themselves of personal responsibility for
\ndoing something about institutionalized corruption.<\/p>\n
It is time for us all, expatriates and Indonesians alike, to
\nmove beyond this simplistic and misleading view of corruption as
\nan inevitable consequence of Indonesian culture.<\/p>\n
It is time to abandon the paralyzing clich that corruption is
\nsimply a matter of culture, and instead look for effective ways
\nto combat this national shame.<\/p>\n
Whence came corruption?<\/p>\n
Several factors contribute to the subculture of corruption in
\nIndonesia. Like most Asian countries, Indonesia has a culture
\nthat strongly favors gift-giving, particularly as a means of
\nexpressing gratitude and loyalty to authority figures or to
\nreward service.<\/p>\n
Corruption may be traceable in part to this practice. But
\nIndonesians themselves distinguish between their traditional
\npractice of giving gifts to express loyalty and appreciation, and
\nthe extortion practiced by some bureaucrats who exploit this
\ngenerous trait.<\/p>\n
Corruption is in part a remnant of a feudalistic political
\nsystem and a village mentality. Indonesia is not so long removed
\nfrom a village-based social structure and economy and a political
\nsystem akin to feudalism.<\/p>\n
Western nations evolved from feudalism into urbanization and
\nindustrialization slowly, over many generations and centuries.
\nNow economic development comes much faster to developing
\ncountries. Factories and shopping malls can appear almost
\novernight.<\/p>\n
In a generation or two, a whole area can be transformed from a
\nvillage to an urban town. But corresponding sociopolitical
\nchanges still take several generations. It takes time for
\npeople's attitudes, habits and preferences to catch up with
\neconomic changes.<\/p>\n
Even when people's economic lives appear urban, their values
\noften still reflect a village outlook.<\/p>\n
The deference shown to authority figures; the importance of
\nparticipating in kinship events, even when doing so requires
\nsignificant disruption of one's work-related responsibilities;
\nthe de-emphasis of punctuality and efficiency; the need to
\npreserve harmony among group members: these values are hallmarks
\nof a village or feudal culture.<\/p>\n
The tendency almost to deify leaders at every level; the sense
\nof obligation and loyalty toward authority figures; the need to
\navoid open conflict on issues about which there is obvious
\ndisagreement; the distaste for imposing punishment or penalties
\non in-group members: attitudes such as these create a fertile
\nfield for abuse of power and greed to flourish in.<\/p>\n
And corruption has flourished here. Greed, abuse of power,
\ndishonesty -- these are ingredients of corruption. But they do
\nnot define Indonesian culture any more than they define American,
\nDutch, Indian, English or German culture. Let us not misconstrue
\nwhat we see. Corruption is a perversion of Indonesian culture,
\nnot its essence.<\/p>\n
Corruption grew against a backdrop of poverty, or more
\naccurately a lack of manufactured possessions, which historically
\ndistinguished the indigenous inhabitants of Indonesia from the
\nforeigners who landed on their shores.<\/p>\n
Imagine the scene as the early Europeans arrived here. Their
\nvessels were larger than those of the local seafarers. Their
\nclothing was more elaborate and more effective in protecting them
\nfrom the elements. Their foodstuffs were more varied and more
\neasily obtained (from barrels rather than from trees and fields).
\nTheir trinkets were dazzling and mysterious. And their weapons
\nwere more potent.<\/p>\n
Is it any wonder that Europeans seemed wealthy and powerful to
\nthe indigenous population, even to those locals whose own wealth
\nmight have included land or gold or gems enough for a king's
\nransom? Is it surprising that foreign explorers (and later
\ntraders and tourists) who thought of themselves as more advanced,
\nreciprocated the hospitality and assistance they were given with
\nexcessive payments in kind?<\/p>\n
Foreigners came to be seen as those-who-bestow. They indulged
\ntheir generous instincts and vanity, as well as the needs of the
\nless materially endowed local populace, by paying local workers
\nmore than they were used to being paid for their labor, advice
\nand services.<\/p>\n
It is not difficult to understand how the two groups, locals
\nand foreigners, developed a pattern of relating to each other
\nwhich cast the foreigners in the role of the suppliers of
\nmaterial gifts or money, and the local inhabitants in the role of
\nsupplicant.<\/p>\n
The roles soon changed, of course, in that the local
\npopulation became the suppliers of the labor and local expertise
\nthat the foreigners needed. But the initial pattern remained.
\nThat pattern placed the relationship of foreigners to locals as
\nbenefactors to recipients, as the powerful to the subordinate, as
\nthe wealthy to the poor -- such is the archetypal pattern which
\nis at the heart of the colonial mentality.<\/p>\n
Even now, when the wealthiest individuals and corporations in
\nIndonesia are Indonesian, the myth of the rich foreigner survives
\namong Indonesians. The perception is that foreigners have lots of
\nmoney and will give it to their less wealthy Indonesian brethren
\nto get what they want. That is what foreigners did in the past.
\nAnd it is what they often still do. Expatriates have the money to
\npay to get things done -- and they spend it freely.<\/p>\n
Expatriates who would not dream of paying an official to
\nperform a required service or to bend the laws for them at home,
\nare quite comfortable doing it here. Rather, they have their
\nIndonesian associates and agents handle it -- as if the
\nIndonesians were from a lower caste with lower standards of
\npropriety than their expatriate associates; the expatriates' very
\nown \"carcass cleaners\".<\/p>\n
Expatriates, who in another context would object to the fact
\nthat a restaurant automatically add a 15 percent gratuity to the
\nbill, will uncritically pay Rp 300,000 for a document which
\nshould cost one-fifth that amount. That is, expatriates let their
\ncompanies pay. Foreigners whose multinational companies often
\nhave large amounts of 'facilitation' money available, can afford
\nto pay, and pay well, for speedy results with documents, or for
\nofficial neglect of violations of regulations.<\/p>\n
Enterprising Indonesians have learned this over the years, and
\nthey exploit this. Yes, expatriates are sometimes exploited by
\ngreedy Indonesians. But the system serves the purposes of
\nforeigners as much as it serves those of the officials and agents
\nwho take the money.<\/p>\n
By now illegal payments are so much a part of the modus
\noperandi of some companies that they, having long enjoyed
\nmutually-beneficial arrangements with accommodating officials,
\nmight be reluctant to upset the relationships they've co-
\nengineered. Without foreigners in the equation, corruption would
\nbe on a whole different, smaller order in Indonesia.<\/p>\n
Foreigners' tendency to pay excessively, and Indonesians'
\nunderstandable instincts for safeguarding such gratuitous
\npayments by institutionalizing them, created this system of using
\nduit (money) to get things done. Feeding certain Indonesian
\ncultural tendencies and economic vulnerabilities, foreign
\narrivistes were an essential part of the genesis of corruption.<\/p>\n
Foreigners fathered this culture of corruption, and now prefer
\nto disown it as if its mother, Indonesia, conceived the monster
\non her own. Isn't it time to stop stereotyping Indonesians as a
\npeople whose culture makes them hopelessly corrupt? Isn't it time
\nto stop thinking of corruption as something practiced by
\nIndonesians, and foreigners as its hapless victims?<\/p>\n
Corruption is not the result of which national or ethnic or
\nracial culture we belong to. It's a matter of the values we
\nsubscribe to, the decisions we make, the actions we take.<\/p>\n
The view that corrupt practices are an inherent part of
\nIndonesian culture is a corrosive myth. Until the myth is
\nreplaced by a different analysis, there is only a dim hope on
\nIndonesia's immediate horizon for economic or political reform
\nand national development. Will Indonesians reject the myth?<\/p>\n
The writer, a former American diplomat who came to Indonesia
\nin 1991, is an attorney with a background in education and
\npsychology.<\/p>",
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