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