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