Fighting the corruption scourge

Fighting the corruption scourge

Corruption cases are apparently still abundant. The Minister
for State Administrative Reform, T.B. Silalahi, told the House of
Representative's Commission II on Wednesday that 61 percent of
complaints received from the public through P.O. Box 5000
concerns cases of corruption.

Not so long ago the Head of the Government Audit Board,
Soedarjono, told the House's Budgetary Commission that during
Pelita V (the Fifth Development Period) his office uncovered 233
cases of corruption, causing a loss of Rp 237.9 billion to the
state.

The Board's findings, the confidential complaints addressed to
P.O. Box 5000 and any other indications of corruption deserve to
be followed up through legal means. This needs emphasizing
because both in practice and in discussions among experts,
different views are often offered regarding the handling of these
cases.

There are those who are of the opinion that as long as the
money is returned in time and before the case is submitted to the
court, no action has to be taken. Others on the other hand
believe that action must be taken, even when the money is
returned, because at least an attempt at embezzlement was made.

If we expect to repress corruption and at the same discipline
officials, we think attempts at corruption should be made subject
to punishment -- in whatever form. In this way officials would be
deterred at an early moment from "playing with fire" by using
public money. Besides, the effect of punishment could be expected
to reverberate more widely among officials, which would prompt
them into behaving more carefully with regard to money.

-- Suara Karya, Jakarta