Don't be pessimistic about ailing corruption: Minister

BOGOR, West Java (JP): State Minister of National Development Planning, Ginandjar Kartasasmita, told the nation yesterday not to be despondent about allegations of rampant corruption in the government as it was still a curative ailment.

Addressing a national meeting of the Association of Indonesian Moslem Intellectuals (ICMI) held at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture, Ginandjar said he believes the "illness" can be cured.

"What we really need now is an integrated system which can prevent corrupt practices, detect corruption and take action against it," he said.

He said the country has a suitable anticorruption law to deter corruption.

"But the law alone is not effective... The country also needs transparency in handling corruption," he said responding to a participant's anxiety of acute corruption in the country.

The Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd. issued earlier this year a report on its survey which named Indonesia the most corrupt country in Asia. The same poor rating was also given to Indonesia last year.

The government recently claimed that there had been a decline in the number of reported corruption cases over the past few years, but conceded it could be due to the increasingly sophisticated mode of the practice.

There were 325 reported cases in the 1994/1995 fiscal year causing a financial loss of almost Rp 2 trillion, 409 cases in 1995/1996 causing a Rp 208 billion loss and 274 cases in 1996/1997 resulting in a loss of Rp 377 billion to the state.

In the 1997/1998 fiscal year, as of last September, the number of reported corruption cases reached 234, causing the state a Rp 77 billion loss.

Ginandjar said corruption was not a monopoly of Indonesia and other developing countries.

"Corruption is a negative aspect of human beings," he said.

He said big countries, including the United States and Japan, had experienced a similar critical period in their history.

He said a former U.S. vice president was dismissed from his position and several Japanese prime ministers were also removed from their posts because of corruption.

"Yet, both the U.S. and Japan have succeeded in reducing corruption because of an existing effective system to tackle and deal with corrupt practices," he said.

Ginandjar said people should not be anxious given the state's current economic situation.

"It is natural for a country which is in transition to experience such an economic situation," he said. (imn)