Code of ethics needed for clean government

JAKARTA (JP): A senior military officer says Indonesia needs a code of ethics to ensure that civil servants' conduct contributes to the campaign for a clean, professional and respected administration.

Maj. Gen. A.M. Hendropriyono, a participant at a course at the military think-tank, the Institute of National Resilience (Lemhannas), said during a seminar yesterday that the state apparatus has yet to achieve the ideal level of participation in the campaign for a clean government.

"We need a code of ethics to ensure that no part of the state apparatus violates the principles of good administration," he said. "We need the code to help guard the state apparatus' moral uprightness."

The seminar was opened by Lemhannas Governor Lt. Gen. Sofian Effendi and was attended by 200 people. The other speakers included legislator Aisjah Amini and secretary-general of the Association of Indonesian Moslem Intellectuals Adi Sasono.

The course is a series of discussions held over five days. Each day a paper written by a group of experts at the Institute is analyzed.

Brig. Gen. Luhut Panjaitan, chief of the Army Infantry Arsenal Center, delivered the paper in yesterday's seminar. One of the issues it focused on was the limited role of the state apparatus, which includes members of the Armed Forces as well as four million civil servants, in redressing social divisions.

Hendropriyono pointed out that unless the gaps are closed, the nation would risk disintegration.

"If we wish to grow into a strong nation, we need to address the problem of increasingly wide social divisions, and the state apparatus should all work as one in the campaign," he said.

Hendropriyono stressed the need to improve the quality of civil servants, and their distribution in the country. A number of regions in the eastern Indonesia, for instance, face a shortage of experts in various fields, he said.

Panjaitan agreed on the need to improve the state apparatus' quality. "The civil servants, who should be the servants of the public, often act is if they were the ones who should be served," he said.

Hendropriyono said that the poor service rendered by civil servants at all levels has long been the target of public criticism.

"The fact that business tycoon Eddy Tansil could escape from prison recently showed how unprofessional our civil servants are," he said.

Tansil was jailed in 1994 for defrauding the state-owned Bank Pembangunan Indonesia (Bapindo) of US$620 million. He was serving a 20-year prison term when he walked out of Cipinang prison after allegedly bribing warders on May 4.

Twelve of the warders have been named as suspects in the escape. An official at the prosecutor's office told the press last week that the office received the dossiers of the warders, now under arrest, from the police last week.

"We can't say now when the dossiers will be submitted to the court for trial because we have yet to process them," the official said.

Tansil is believed to have fled the country and his whereabouts is unknown. (swe/imn)