Anti-graft body falls short of expectations

Anti-graft body falls short of expectations

Frans H. Winarta, Jakarta

Corruption has long been widespread in Indonesia and has
penetrated into the political, economic and legal systems. This
chronic disease is considered now to be the country's greatest
enemy, and has affected almost all aspects of life. You can
hardly point to one government institution that is free of
corruption. Even the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of
Religious Affairs and the Ministry of Social Services, which are
should be free from corruption as their main responsibilities are
to help the poor, educate the people and support humanitarianism,
are also riddled with corruption.

Corruption has caused a great deal of suffering for the people
of Indonesia. It has resulted in a persistent budget deficit and
the recent increase in oil-based fuel prices. The budget deficit
has to be covered by more aggressive taxation, and the increase
in fuel prices has resulted into higher prices for staple
foodstuffs.

There is no magic formula for combating corruption, but there
are countries that have successfully managed to do so. There
approaches cannot, however, cannot be automatically applied to
other countries such as Indonesia as the circumstances in each
case are different.

One of the key factors that has led to rampant corruption in
Indonesia is the fact that the country's law institutions are
themselves corrupt. As long as judicial corruption is still
widespread, it is difficult to imagine how Indonesia can deal
with the problem in a relatively short space of time. Therefore,
law reform in Indonesia has to start with institutional reform.

It is therefore not surprising that the famous Dutch legal
scholar, Professor Taverne, stated as follows:

"Give me a good judge, a good supervising judge, a good
prosecutor and a good police force, and with a bad criminal code
I can enforce the law."

In response to the public's cries for the eradication of
corruption, the government of Indonesia established the
Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) last year and has vested
it with extraordinary powers to combat corruption, such as the
right to detain a suspect outside of the normal procedure, to
reverse the burden of proof, to tap telephones, to present
electronic banking and photostat records in evidence, and so
forth.

On top of that, the KPK has been established as a "superbody"
that has the power to take over the investigation and prosecution
of corruption cases of major public importance.

Approaching the third anniversary of its establishment, the
KPK has been subjected to criticism by the public, the
legislature, observers, legal practitioners and academics. They
argue that the KPK has been slow and lacking in creativity in
investigating corruption cases. However, one should bear in mind
that the KPK has limited resources and personnel at its disposal,
and has yet to get the full support of government institutions.

No of the government institution has an internal program to
eradicate corruption internally. This is due to an absence of
political will on the part of the government. The declaration
made by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono announcing a war on
corruption was not acted upon by his ministers. With the KPK's
extraordinary powers, it should actually be able to speed up the
anticorruption campaign, work more efficiently and withstand
attempts to influence it by third parties.

It is possible that the slow progress of the anticorruption
campaign has been contributed to by the setting up by
Presidential Decree of the Corruption Eradication Team
(Timtastipikor), as a result of which the "superbody" status of
the KPK was diminished by making Attorney General's Office and
the Police representatives its equals on the team. This is why
the KPK has never been able to take over major corruption cases
involving the police or the prosecution service.

This present situation needs to be analyzed carefully by the
government. If it is true that the establishment of the
Corruption Eradication Team has weakened KPK, then it would be
better for the President to abolish the former.

The KPU case is a concrete example of how the KPK is
apparently unable to apply equal treatment to suspects. Some of
those implicated have been brought to justice, while others, who
are close to the powerholders, have been spared prosecution. This
is a crucial issue, and the anticorruption campaign will
assuredly fail if there is no equality of treatment before the
law.

The reason why Lee Kuan Yew was so successful in his efforts
to wipe out corruption in the city state of Singapore is because
he did not discriminate between those involved in crime. On the
contrary, what we see here now is the opposite of what has
happened in Singapore.

Susilo promised the voters during the election campaign in
2004 that he would personally lead the anticorruption campaign in
Indonesia. Many now expect him to do what he said he would do.

The writer is the chairman of the Indonesian Legal Studies
Foundation.