Axing graft takes more than words

Benny Susetyo, Cultural Observer, Malang, East Java

President Megawati's recent statement during the inauguration of Naval barracks in Driyoreji, Gresik, East Java, is interesting to note.

She said that in the past, generals of the Indonesian armed forces were involved in graft and neglected their soldiers. They looked great in their uniforms emblazoned with stars while the troops lived in dire poverty.

"It seems they enjoy the fruits of corruption while their subordinates live in financial straits or keleleran, as the Javanese put it," she said.

The president also showed great concern about the lack of discipline among members of the Indonesian armed forces.

Her statement, as strong as it sounds, is merely a soft breeze amid the raging winds of corruption.

We may no longer have any sense of shame as a nation -- we are no longer embarrassed to be dubbed "the world's most corrupt nation".

In 1998, the reformists brought down the New Order regime because of its unchecked corruption. Unfortunately, the system of government today remains just as corrupt as before.

In 2002, Transparency International (TI), an organization headquartered in Berlin, Germany, ranked Indonesia as the world's fourth most corrupt country. In 2003, of the 133 countries that the TI evaluated, Indonesia was ranked sixth, only two notches above its 2002 rank. An earlier survey conducted by the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd. (PERC) on 1,000 foreign companies operating in 12 Asian states showed that Indonesia scored 9.92. All in all, Indonesia may virtually be considered Asia's most corrupt country, a condition that defines the mental plight of the nation.

According to a TI survey, the level of corruption in Indonesia is worse than in Papua New Guinea (2.1), Vietnam (2.4), the Philippines (2.5) or Malaysia (5.2). In the same survey, Finland, scoring 9.7, is ranked the world's most corruption-free country while Singapore, with the same score, is ranked fifth.

Given these results, it seems that Indonesia's scientists, academics, intellectuals, politicians and the general public view corruption as just an ordinary practice or social trend.

Unwittingly, we have often said corruption is part of our national culture, and have even coined the phrase, "the culture of corruption".

Schoolchildren are taught to preserve the national culture, the culture that evolves from our values and tradition. If corruption is considered part of our culture, is it also taught at schools as something to be preserved?

Widespread corruption also seems to be part of the public psyche. Corruption is practiced at all levels of society. In the lower strata, corruption may have been inspired by those found in the uppermost strata.

The present system of government is as yet incapable of creating a corruption-free society because the government is inherently corrupt. From the New Order era to the present, corruption is deeply rooted in the government.

It also seems the anticorruption movement has yet to turn into a coordinated movement, that corruption is yet to be considered a common enemy that must be routed once and for all. Attempts have been made to eradicate corruption, but unfortunately these attempts have been half-hearted at best.

At the government level, a systematic effort to eradicate graft has not been made, so corrupt activities continue, while the anticorruption movement has yet to be carried out comprehensively so that corruption will be wiped out.

Ironically, probes into corruption cases sometimes depend more on political motives than an ethical resolve to eradicate graft. Megawati once said she did not want to see the corruption issue politicized, fearing that she would be accused of violating human rights if extreme measures were taken to eliminate corruption, collusion and nepotism.

We agree with her. But of course, we reject the notion that eradicating corruption is tantamount to human rights violation.

Isn't corruption the most concrete form of human rights violation? Our problem as a nation is how to stop corruption and wipe it out, roots and all. We may have only a morsel of shame left, but do we not still hope that we won't be dubbed the world's most corrupt nation?

The nation requires a firm leader that can take extreme measures against terrorists and dissidents against the state, but also against corruptors. The best way for a leader to do this is not by telling people to avoid getting involved in corruption, but by holding himself/herself up as a model example, being clean and taking stern action against corruptors.

The crux of the matter is not how to prevent a political power from being corrupt, but how to stop corruption. Only when this is achieved can society follow suit and a cleaner system be established.

In the present modern era, corruption is hard to eradicate in developing countries because it is widely practiced as a means to achieve a particular goal. Corruption is practiced in a highly complicated social system and is not found on a modest scale, although the public view is usually simplified.

Corruption does not stand alone. It exists because of a lack of transparency in the bureaucracy. A closed government does not give the freedom to access credible and adequate information. As long as the policy of power fails to facilitate access to information -- for example, regarding budgetary expenditures and targets -- eradicating corruption will simply remain a discourse without follow-up, or in other words, mere illusion.

What is of pressing need now is precise and determined action. It is also necessary at this juncture to disseminate to the public that apart from terrorism, corruption is the greatest crime against humanity. In this way, there will no longer be any reason to say that the eradication of corruption violates human rights. Through fair legal recourse and firm political vision with high moral standards, eradicating corruption must be set as the main priority in bringing about a clean government.

Anyone engaged in corruption thus violates human dignity and must be severely punished -- because he violates the dignity of life.

When a public fund, however little, is manipulated in pursuit of personal interests, it must be investigated thoroughly via a fair mechanism of the law.

Corruption should not be considered part of our culture, even if it is unavoidable that corruption is deeply rooted in this country, as corruption is an affront against human dignity.