Clean politician campaign kicks off

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.