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.