Civil servants ordered to be neutral in party politics

Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post, Medan

State Minister of Civil Servants' Empowerment Faisal Tamin has instructed all civil servants in Indonesia to be neutral in party politics, while staying free of corruption.

Faisal, who is also the chairman of the Indonesian Civil Servants' Association (Korpri), said here that they should refrain from past practices in earlier general elections in which they only gave their support to one political party, which is the former ruling party Golkar.

"You should be neutral in order to maximize your service to the public," he told a group of civil servants of North Sumatra province during a forum here on Thursday.

He said that, when civil servants supported a political party, they could not fully serve the public.

If civil servants want to get involved with a party, he said, then they should quit their jobs first.

"But if civil servants can enter the political parties, why don't we just set up our own political party?" he asked, only half-jokingly.

Faisal also warned civil servants not to engage in corruption, and added that anyone found guilty of graft would be fired, and sentenced according to regulation.

He said that the government would apply harsh measures because many officials have been caught abusing their power, often thinking that they enjoyed legal protection from prosecution.

"I warn you that every undisciplined civil servant will be punished -- this is for sure," he said, adding that there are corrupt civil servants in every province in the country.

Meanwhile, the head of the Medan Prosecutor's Office, Chairuman Harahap, told The Jakarta Post that most of the 132 corruption cases in Medan being handled by his agency were actually committed by civil servants.

Chairuman said that, during the period between August 2001 and March of this year, the prosecutor's office had arrested 12 suspects in corruption cases who were mostly government officials.

He said that they would root out more cases, as corruption is known to be rampant in the province.

The prosecutor's office, he added, had handed over the dossiers of corruption cases to the courts of, among others, Penyabungan and Sidikalang.

Asked whether their low salaries may have led many civil servants to corruption, as some have suggested, he replied that the reason had neither relevance, nor merit.

"Small salaries should not be reason to become corrupt ... They should maintain their integrity and morality while serving the country sincerely," he said.