Clean politician campaign kicks off
Kurniawan Hari and Urip Hudiono, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) will launch on Monday a nationwide information campaign on politicians running for office.
Religious figures, politicians and non-governmental groups (NGOs) are expected to support the campaign, which aims to rid the country of unscrupulous politicians.
The campaign, which will be launched at the Proklamasi Monument in Central Jakarta, will provide voters in the 2004 elections with information on the track records of all legislative candidates contending the general election.
ICW coordinator Teten Masduki said the campaign had been devised due to the public's disappointment with unscrupulous politicians in the current regime and their fading hope of having a clean government resulting from the 2004 general election.
"We will facilitate people to enable them to have general standard in casting their vote during the elections. This will be a big nationwide campaign," Teten told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
He said, however, that it was still to be decided whether unscrupulous politicians would actually be named or just indicators given to enable voters to identify better legislative candidates.
The campaign aims to force political parties to carefully select their legislative candidates and not nominate those with bad track records and poor performance, Teten said.
Ignatius Haryanto, vice director of the Institute for Press and Development Studies (LSPP), said the campaign's organizing committee could publish a book listing crooked politicians.
Other NGOs supporting the campaign include the Institute for Social and Economic Research, Education and Information (LP3ES), the Center for Electoral Reform (Cetro), Transparency Indonesia, Impartial and the Indonesian Environmental Forum (Walhi).
Members of the campaign revealed that the NGOs had prepared a team of lawyers should any politician file a libel suit against them.
Several figures, including Muslim scholar Nurcholish Madjid and head of the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) Kwik Kian Gie, have pledged support for the campaign.
Kwik, the minister of national development and chairman of research and development for the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), suggested that the NGOs activists should also take their own credibility into account during the campaign.
"We must remember that the credibility of two sides will be at stake in such an activity. One is the credibility of politicians and the other of the NGOs themselves," he said.
Kwik received much attention this year when he announced that a significant amount of international loans for Indonesia had been abused by state officials and that PDI-P was the most corrupt political party in the country.
While being somewhat indifferent toward the issue of politicians, Kwik was concerned that the NGOs could lose the public's trust if they disseminated inaccurate information in identifying supposedly dirty politicians.
"We certainly don't want that to happen -- the campaign backfiring on the NGOs," Kwik said.
Meanwhile, noted Muslim scholar Nurcholish "Cak Nur" Madjid said he would attend Monday's ceremony to launch the campaign.
"And let's not consider this as sabotage against some politicians, but good political education for the public to be really critical of who they elect in the upcoming elections," he said.
Steps of the campaign
1. The campaign will be launched in Jakarta and other cities
2. Preparing teams of lawyers
3. Developing a database
4. Disseminating criteria in recognizing unscrupulous politicians, especially those involved in at least one of the five following issues -- corruption, human rights abuse, environmental destruction, sexual abuse or drugs
5. Improving awareness of incompetent legislative candidates
6. Providing information on all legislative candidates.