Embezzlement

Embezzlement

I was astonished to know the sum of estimated state money embezzled during the 1994/1995 fiscal year as reported in The Jakarta Post, March 17, 1995. The figure Rp 1.1 trillion is such a big amount that actually could be dispersed in perspective posts.

I wonder how the built-in control system which aims to control state budget works, and how a large sum of state money vanished uselessly. The taxes collected from the average people presumably are a little portion of that loss.

It seems that leakages of state money are now an ordinary phenomenon and people will not be surprised unless the embezzlement case involves trillions of rupiah.

I remember a phrase of Prof. Slamet Imam Santoso, a noted Indonesian psychologist regarding this leakage. He metaphorically referred this phenomenon as bocor ke atas (upward leakage). It sounds illogical when it is related to the natural phenomenon but it is logical whenever it come to state funds!

WAHYUNI RIZKIANA KAMAH

Jakarta