A farcical antigraft drive

The authorities are apparently beating an anticorruption drum by disclosing case per case of uncovered corrupt practices.

To date, the revealed cases involve billions of U.S. dollars missing from state-owned companies.

The number of uncovered cases -- and those which the government says it will announce soon -- apparently has not sent shock waves through the nation. This is because the public has long felt there were no words to describe the seriousness of illicit business within the administration. It is nothing but a disease, which the New Order regime and president Soeharto nurtured.

A recent investigative report by one weekly magazine disclosed that moral decay has also gnawed away at law enforcement agencies, such as the Attorney General's Office.

Corruption is not only an immoral breach of the people's faith but also a dangerous destabilizer of a government. There have been plenty of examples demonstrating the facts among developing countries. Some countries like Malaysia and Singapore seriously fight graft, while the Soeharto regime let corruption stifle the country.

Corruption took its grip on the country long ago and spread its tentacles so deep and became so intricate that many people now consider it impossible to eradicate. The question they ask is: who is investigating it?

Since the 1971 Corruption Law was passed, the regime set up various antigraft campaign agencies, which include inspector generals with departments. But none has been effective and the corruption rate has increased to dangerous proportions because corrupt officials, from the ruling elite down to the village level, are never sated.

The anticorruption drive was never taken seriously, anyway, because it was conducted from the bottom up instead of from the top down. Today, corruption is extremely complicated because the corrupters have mostly had decades of experience in this dirty business.

For example, Coordinating Minister for Development Supervision and State Administrative Reforms Hartarto Sastrosoenarto disclosed early this month that out of 3,000 corruption cases involving Rp 7.21 trillion (US$1.07 billion), only Rp 76.32 billion could be retrieved.

The present regime of President B. J. Habibie is not known to have a concrete strategy to eradicate corruption, let alone have a clear concept of clean governance. His administration has blatantly showed its reluctance to carry out the instruction of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) to probe into the possibility of corruption, collusion, nepotism and crony capitalism involving corrupt officials, and allegedly the former president.

So why has the present regime kicked off the high voltage campaign? Habibie, who is facing difficulties in his presidential bid, is very much in need of a boost to his political campaign.

However, the head of state has failed to impress upon the people that he is the right leader for a clean and democratic government. Corruption has become the devil here, and it could be too late for anybody, much less him, to exorcise.

Clean governance can only be created under a leader who is free from the Old Order mentality.