Corruption has become a cultural indicator

This is the second of two articles on corruption by Ignas Kleden, a sociologist and director of The Go-East Institute focusing on East Indonesian affairs in Jakarta. He is also a consultant with the Indonesian Anti-Corruption Consultancy here.

JAKARTA (JP): During Soeharto's administration critics were punished if they offended social etiquette or national ideals. Typical expressions usually hinted at their lack of knowledge of lofty eastern values of politesse and finesse.

Soeharto himself used to characterize his critics as those convinced of their abilities without being able to empathize with others. Anyone lacking these political aesthetics was liable to be accused of being subversive.

This is easy to understand if one keeps in mind that in a feudalistic society only the nobility rules while the commoners or the peasant-tenants work and produce.

There was a relation between power and culture controlled by the nobility with the economy. Economy was identical with rural agriculture, which became the peasants' responsibility. Trade was something alien, unknown and unrecognized.

The Indonesian word for trader is pedagang which originates from the word dagang. In old Malay the word dagang means traveler, wanderer, foreigner, stranger or vagabond. This was the case because in a patron-client relationship, a typical feature of feudalistic agricultural communities, there was no place for traders.

The social status of traders was something alien inserted from outside; it assumed only an interstitial nature in the feudalistic social structure. It was not celebrated or controlled by local rituals. Market exchange in trading might have been important but it was not in everyday consciousness as something to be attended to or to be taken care of.

In traditional communities what mattered was power from above and submission from below. Economy was something taken for granted. The nobility took it for granted that they should have more than enough to eat, live in big houses and be served by dozens of servants and maids.

The commoners also took it for granted that they had to supply a part of their agricultural produce to their masters, to gain political protection and cultural education in return. The market was very small and limited, engaged in by only people of unclear social status. The nobility looked down upon trading as dirty work while peasants looked at this as something unfamiliar which they just had to tolerate.

This agricultural-feudalistic legacy seems to be deeply embedded in the consciousness and even subconsciousness of Indonesians today, though they might have very little or nothing to do with agricultural life.

The status system still has its workings in that those who go up the mobility ladder, feel and are treated as the new nobility by having the old privileges.

They do not feel subject to public control just as the landlords in the past did not feel accountable to their peasant- tenants. In a feudalistic society, control, along with power and culture, can only come from above and never from below.

However, in the old times every member of the nobility had their own commoners who were dependent upon them and to whom they were responsible. Needless to say, this responsibility was entirely different from the modern notion of accountability.

In those days "responsibility" implied only the attention which should be given by a master to those who worked for him. This was done not on the basis of rights and obligations which had been agreed upon beforehand, but rather on the basis of whim and favor on the one hand, as well as a sense of propriety on the other.

It was not a matter of justice but merely a matter of generosity.

There was also corruption because there was very little awareness concerning the categorical difference between the public and the private. For centuries people used to differentiate between one's own belonging and that of others, or between the people's belonging and that of a king or the nobility. Public awareness of public belongings was still limited to natural assets such as land, forest, water and sea. The use of communal land, for instance, is organized through a kinship mechanism according to local traditional customs.

However, there is a very weak and vague awareness of public utilities among Indonesians. By definition all public utilities belong to the civil society as a mode of grouping, based not on territory and citizenship nor on membership in a traditional community -- but on civic rights and equal entitlement to legal protection.

Whereas communal life within communities is organized according to cultural values and norms, life within the state is organized according to power relations, and life within civil society is organized according to the rule of law.

The double role of the law is clear in that it is supposed to be able to translate various cultural value systems which are particular in nature into legal regulations which hold true for everybody from all cultural groupings.

The law is also expected to translate the ruling power of the state into the rule of law.

In that case public utilities and public belongings are not only familiar to people used to cultural control and control by power. Nobody in the traditional villages would dare cultivate a piece of land without cultural approval of the communities. In the same vein, nobody in the cities would dare take water or bricks from the residence of a mayor or local military commander. However almost everybody will borrow a book from the village library without feeling obliged to return it on time. Also, no one will pay attention to a damaged public phone.

As a test case for Jakarta: No press marketing management in Jakarta will dare sell newspapers in boxes on the streets or at market places, believing that those who take the newspapers will not place their money in the box.

This is so because the sale of newspapers is not seen as an action subject to either cultural control or power, or political control. It is subject to social control or public control which is unknown in most of traditional communities.

Libraries and newspapers are only two examples of public utilities. The most striking example is, of course, banking. Banks are institutions which are not arranged according to cultural norms and values, neither according to power nor political relations.

Those who take credit from a bank face no political or cultural risks. They would only face legal risks, which becomes the sole control within civil society. However, as described above, the civil society and the public are unfamiliar to most of these risks.

Accordingly, public utilities are equally alien because though private banks have their owners, banks as such exemplify public utilities which according to popular perception belongs to nobody and can therefore be taken away by anybody.

IBRA stands for a very obvious lack of responsibility of people who have taken credits from banks in Indonesia. It hints at the fact that public funds represented by banks never arouses the feeling of obligation among those who take the loans to return the money before their deadlines.

In more general terms, legal control until now is less effective than both political control by power and cultural control by norms and values.

Corruption is a transgression of the law, not of power or culture. In that sense, the struggle against corruption -- from a long-term perspective -- can only be effective if the awareness of the existence and the significance of civil society is strengthened at the same time.

If people are not aware of the existence of civil society as much as they are aware of both communal communities and the state, then it is really difficult to push for law enforcement.

Consequently, corruption as a legal matter will unwittingly be entitled to a sort of impunity, because unlike cultural and political consciousness, legal awareness is still lacking. Transgressions of the law becomes unimportant or even nonexistent.

This does not mean that serious action cannot be taken to end corruption until the awareness of the civil society becomes sufficiently developed.

One can confidently say in a dialectical way that taking serious action against corruption by making it a subject of punishment (according to the due process of law) will help strengthen the awareness of both civil society as a public domain and the law as its most important representation.