Corruption rampant among councillors
Abdul Khalik, Jakarta
Corruption run amok seems to have become the order of the day within the country's legislatures as the list of criminal cases involving policy makers from all administrative levels grows at the rate of one new case per day, according to the latest Attorney General's Office (AGO) data.
AGO spokesman Kemas Yahya Rahman explained on Wednesday that the number of legislators implicated in corruption cases across the country had increased from 270 in May to 300 in June.
"Many of them have been accused of misusing state funds by allocating money for fictitious programs. Many others received bribe money during the elections of their regent, mayor or governor," said Rahman.
According to a list released by the prosecutor's office, there are currently 300 corruption cases that they are working on involving legislators representing 30 of the country's 32 provinces.
The list suggested that corruption was not confined to one area or one or two main islands, but indeed nationwide, from Natuna island in the north of the country to Lombok, and from Central and West Java to East Kutai in Central Kalimantan, just to name a few.
Other corruption cases involved the use of fictitious documents to claim double the money on a project that may or may not exist as well as the misuse of cooperative funds.
Kemas said that the state losses could run into the trillions of rupiah range as each as the cases averaged between Rp 1 billion (US$111,000) and Rp 10 billion.
"However, we don't know for sure the amount of state losses because these cases are all being investigated. We will reveal the total when we know for sure," he said.
The country has been rocked by a dizzying series of corruption cases involving hundreds of councillors in the last two months. In a spectacular example of a corruption conspiracy involving nearly the entire legislative body, the Padang district court in West Sumatra sentenced 43 of 55 provincial councillors to prison on May 17 for embezzling billions of rupiah from the 2002 provincial budget.
However, the rash of investigations has raised questions on whether the AGO's moves are politically motivated considering that none of the local administration heads had been implicated and Attorney General M.A. Rachman has specifically ordered his prosecutors to investigate councillors across the country ahead of the presidential election.
Several analysts have suggested that other local government officials, including governors and regents, must also be investigated because it was next to impossible that they knew nothing about the misuse of state funds.
Kemas dismissed allegations that the increased legal activity was connected to the AGO efforts to increase Megawati's anticorruption image ahead of the July 5 presidential election, saying that his office had began investigating most of the cases long before the election was scheduled.
"We'd never do such a thing just to boost our image or because the Attorney General's term will come to an end or because of the election. Most of the cases began two or three years ago. We will investigate the heads of local administrations once we finish with the legislatures," pledged Kemas.