Eradicating corruption

Eradicating corruption

As an Indonesian scholar I am pleased to read Indonesia:
Uprooting graft published in the Economist, April 30, 2005, page
26, by correctly posing the question: "Is President Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono at last getting serious about tackling
corruption?"

Unfortunately the government of Indonesia does not have a
strategy to eradicate corruption. And above all, the government
is unable to distinguish between "corruption due to need" and
"corruption due to greed".

Can you imagine, President Susilo promised during the
presidential election that he himself would lead the fight
against corruption in Indonesia.

How naive! Indonesia follows the "corporate democracy", where
economic activities are led the Vice President, who has a
corporate and trade background and so the senior minister of
economics.

The corporate democracy tells us that the corporate greed is
very obvious principle of life like in the United States:
Corporate interests and religious interests are the main theme
of the U.S. democracy, as proven by the daily CEO and CFO
scandals.

President Susilo should first straighten up the "corruption
due to need", through a national price policy, to address all the
imbalances between the installed capacity and the rate of
utilization through price adjustments.

While to eradicate "corruption due to greed" in Indonesia: In
addition to creating socio-cultural-economic democracy, the
political democracy should be guided by the local ancient wisdom
of musyawarah dan mufakat (deliberations and consensus), not as
is practiced today: Procedural democracy by voting through money
politics.

HARTOJO WIGNJOWIJOTO, Founder and Chairman The Institute of National
Capacity Studies, Jakarta