Fighting graft, Susilo needs to fight against the odd

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.