Corruption has become a cultural indicator

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.