Dirty politicians a blight on Indonesia: Scholar

A'an Suryana, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The integrity of members of the House of Representatives (DPR) needed to be overhauled, not the political system, noted political scientist Deliar Noer said in Jakarta on Friday.

"The problem revolves around the morality of the House members and not the system," Deliar Noer, a professor of politics at the University of Indonesia, said.

"The Netherlands is using a proportional system (similar to the one applied in Indonesia), but the country still has good and credible legislators," he said.

Deliar made the remarks in response to an earlier statement made by another political observer T.A. Legowo that a system overhaul was needed to help save the House's integrity.

Legowo said in a discussion on Thursday that the proportional system currently used by Indonesia should be replaced with the district system since it was proven to have been able to increase transparency.

Deliar expressed concern over the degrading of both members of the House and the People's Consultative Assembly.

It was very much contradictory in the past, when most Indonesian leaders, notably Sukarno and Hatta, proved themselves to be role models for Indonesians.

Sukarno and Hatta, for example, strongly rejected an offer from the Dutch, tempting them with good positions in the Dutch administration before independence in 1945.

Instead of receiving the offer, they were defiant and even went forward to fight for the people's freedom even though they knew they would suffer, Deliar said.

"Today who are the leaders whom we could follow, especially the legislators?" he asked.

According to Deliar, a good system doesn't guarantee the integrity of the House.

"Morality should be given much more emphasis since people can seek various ways to manipulate the system," he said, adding that improving the legislators' morality would need time, lots of it.

"From now on, the government has to boost its efforts to improve the morals of the people through either informal education or school curriculum. This would provide a breed of good legislators in the future," he said.

For the incumbent DPR members, Deliar urged them to uphold morals while they served.

"Should they fail to do that, their credibility would diminish before the people. And, this will bring losses to themselves," Deliar told reporters at his party's Muslim Community Party (PUI) headquarters in South Jakarta.

The second way to improve the integrity of the House was through enforcing the law, he said.

"Strict law enforcement will discourage them from wrongdoing in the future."

Indira Sugondo, a legislator, conceded on Thursday that extortion and bribery were rampant among the legislators, some of whom were active in extorting the regional governments or state enterprises they visited.

Another confession was disclosed on Friday by Noviantika Nasution, another member of the DPR.

Noviantika conceded that some entrepreneurs visited the DPR/MPR members in search of privileges and protection for their businesses.

"For example, an entrepreneur consults with a DPR member on how to collect debts from the state electricity company PLN," said Noviantika, a legislator from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle.

Noviantika said abuse of power by DPR members frequently took place after such consultations because DPR members themselves were usually bought off with a sum of funds by the entrepreneur and the DPR members themselves, who later acted as debt collectors.

Noviantika shared Deliar's comments that the morality of DPR members would play a prominent role in lifting the House's integrity.

"It comes back to their consciences. The DPR members must be professional and not abuse their positions," she said.