Fighting graft, Susilo needs to fight against the odd

Harry Bhaskara, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono made an interesting remark when he opened the Muhammadiyah congress in the East Java mountain resort of Malang on Sunday.

"Islam is not wrong. We, the believers, are to blame because we are incapable of embracing the spirit of its moral teachings," he said in front of 20,000 Muhammadiyah members at the Gajayana soccer stadium.

He lamented the fact that despite being a predominantly Islamic country, Indonesia is constantly ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world.

Although respected scholars and religious leaders have voiced similar remarks, the statement coming from the president carried more weight.

And how right Susilo is. Religion, in this case, Islam, surely cannot be blamed. It is its believers who are erring, especially when it comes to matters like corruption.

Susilo wanted the second-largest Muslim organization with its 30 million members to lead the war against corruption. The question is, can Muhammadiyah rise to the challenge?

In October 2003, Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Muslim organization with a claim to a membership of 40 million, pledged to fight corruption together. Nothing much has happened since.

This is not the first time Susilo has linked religion and corruption. In May, Susilo made a related comment in front of Buddhist believers at the famous Borobudur temple.

"It's quite confusing that our nation, which we say is religious, turns out to have a very high level of criminality, especially corruption," he said during the celebration of the Buddhist Day of Enlightenment.

Indonesians, he said, were not "sufficiently solid" when it came to morality, especially on respecting the rights of others and the importance of public money.

What came after this statement was more down to earth. Susilo said that if Indonesians did not view religious teachings as simply rituals, things would be different.

This idea, which is certainly not new, seems to be the crux of the problem. Rituals often tend to be seen as the most important part of many religions. Believers tend to forget the substance of the teachings and how to apply them in everyday life.

As one of the world's most corrupt nations, we have few rivals. When the long-known-about but never-before-prosecuted scandal regarding haj funds at the Ministry of Religious Affairs was finally investigated recently, people sighed in exasperation with the idea that we were even trying to "cheat God". When formerly clean intellectuals and rights activists working at the General Elections Committee (KPU) were implicated in corruption, we began to wonder if anything was sacred?

The ways we can blame ourselves are uncountable. Apart from our penchant for ritual, in matters of corruption it is our fondness of explaining and excusing the crime that is most visible. We often say that people steal money because they have small salaries. We love to make excuses and believe alibis, however unlikely. We say it is necessary to pay kickbacks to win contracts. When wealthy crooks are caught out and return the money they have embezzled, the authorities bizarrely seem to regard this as a reason to close the investigations or criminal cases against them. As if nothing has happened.

This occurs again and again; from the case of former Speaker of House of Representatives Akbar Tandjung, to the recent fiasco befalling the KPU members.

Unfortunately, religion and morality do not necessarily have any correlation in public life. A nation can be seen as largely non-practicing, or atheistic or agnostic, such as New Zealand or Japan, and yet these nations are not known as two of the most corrupt countries in the world. This does not mean that Susilo has missed the point, it actually proves what he is saying. In countries where religious values have been internalized into daily life, religion's influence in a people's history and development cannot be denied.

To fight corruption, Susilo must employ a two-pronged strategy. While persuading believers to put less emphasis on ritual, he must also set up a real deterrent -- courts with real teeth that do not kowtow to rich thieves.

What differentiates countries like Japan, Singapore and even Malaysia from Indonesia is their higher level of legal certainty. This is what we are lacking the most.

But can Susilo succeed here where the other post-Soeharto presidents have tried and failed or, at worst, only paid lip service to the idea?

We can only pray he will.