Corruption Again: What Has Bureaucratic Reform Achieved?
When disaster strikes, the state should be there to save its people. Emergency budgets should be made available immediately, disaster-response equipment should be ready, and officials should work selflessly. What happens if, amid a disaster, funds meant to address the crisis and help victims are instead embezzled?
The corruption case linked to disaster management at the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) in October 2026 is a painful irony. The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) suspects irregularities in procurement worth around Rp150 billion between 2024 and 2026. If proven—and such cases usually are—this crime would not only cause losses to state finances, but also betray the duty to protect the people’s safety.
More troubling still, this has happened time and again. The Covid-19 social assistance case ensnared former Social Affairs Minister Juliari Peter Batubara. More recently, senior officials also turned the Free Nutritious Meals programme into a source of spoils. The Hajj service, too, has a history of corruption cases involving two of its ministers. From aid for poor people to disaster response, budgets intended to protect the public have repeatedly been embezzled.
Why does the state still fail to close off opportunities for this kind of corruption, even though prevention efforts have been under way since the 1960s and 1970s? And why, despite the strengthening of those efforts through bureaucratic reform since 2010, does the problem persist?
Since 2010, Indonesia has pursued bureaucratic reform systematically. Regulations have been introduced, institutional structures updated, performance indices drawn up, integrity zones established and awards handed out. The Ministry of Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform’s name was expanded to include “Bureaucratic Reform”, underscoring the agenda of building a clean, service-oriented bureaucracy.
Yet sting operations targeting regional leaders and ministry officials continue to recur. This is a paradox: procedures and indicators have changed, but the behaviour and power relations that foster corruption remain entrenched. Reform has become superficial—it appears to be progressing on paper, but has yet to make a sufficient difference in practice.
Presidential Regulation No. 81/2010 on the 2010–2025 Grand Design for Bureaucratic Reform set out the goals of clean, accountable, effective and service-oriented government. The 2014 targets included raising Indonesia’s Corruption Perceptions Index score to 5.0 on a scale of 0 to 10, and increasing the number of institutions awarded an Unqualified Opinion (WTP) by the Audit Board of Indonesia (BPK).
The problem is that administrative achievements do not automatically signify integrity. A WTP opinion assesses whether financial statements are fairly presented; it does not guarantee that an institution is free of corruption. Nor does a bureaucratic reform rating ensure that its officials are free from bribery and conflicts of interest. Indeed, quite a few officials have been caught bribing auditors to obtain a WTP rating.
Transparency International recorded Indonesia’s Corruption Perceptions Index score at 34 out of 100 in 2025, down from 37 in 2024. This is not a complete picture of criminal corruption, but it is a warning that integrity in the public sector remains a serious problem.
The issue is not a lack of regulations. Reform seems easily trapped in the fulfilment of paperwork, indicators and ceremonies. Meanwhile, the door to corruption remains open because of high political costs, patronage, conflicts of interest, procurement mechanisms vulnerable to manipulation, and weak oversight. Public office is still widely treated as a position from which to extract profits and privileges, rather than a solemn duty to serve the public.
Bureaucratic reform should address the root causes more directly. Recruitment and promotion of officials must be more transparent; conflicts of interest must be prevented; procurement should be open to public scrutiny; and internal oversight must be able to act independently, free from interference. Political parties also need to reform transactional practices in the nomination of officials.
Law enforcement must be consistent, accompanied by the seizure of criminal proceeds in accordance with the law. For corruption involving disaster funds that meets the requirements of Article 2, paragraph (2) of the Corruption Eradication Law, the death penalty may be considered through a transparent and fair judicial process.
Bureaucratic reform must not merely succeed in changing a ministry’s name, multiplying indicators and piling up performance reports. Reform will have meaning only if corruption genuinely declines and people’s rights are protected.
When even disaster-management funds become a target for corruption, what is at stake is not only public money, but also the people’s trust in the state itself.