Government should limit gifts to officials: Scholar
JAKARTA (JP): A scholar suggested yesterday that the government renew its anticorruption campaign by regulating the maximum worth of "gifts" that a government official can accept from businesspeople.
Ryaas Rasyid, the rector of the state-run Institute of State Administration, said the only way possible to start a national drive against bribery was to limit the amount of money or the value of a gift that an official could take from the business community.
"This is the easiest way of detecting bribery," Ryaas told reporters after the graduation of the school's 549 students here yesterday.
"For instance, the decree could stipulate that a government official could only take cash or a gift worth up to Rp 100,000 (US$27.6) from a businessman," he said. "If the official received more than Rp 100,000, he or she would have to hand it over to the state."
Some countries, including the United States, have rules limiting the value of gifts given their officials or heads of state. Neighboring country Singapore places even greater restrictions on its officials.
Premjith Sadasivan, the first secretary to the Singaporean Embassy, told The Jakarta Post his government did not allow government officials to receive gifts from businessmen.
"Our law prohibits government officials from accepting anything from businesspeople," he said.
In the oath that Indonesian government officials take when they assume office, there is already a stipulation restricting them from receiving anything from anyone. In practice, however, bribery has been considered as among the most rampant social ills here.
Bribery
Ryaas conceded that bribery was a chronic problem affecting all layers of Indonesian society, and was hard to combat. Clear stipulations of the amount of gifts an official may take could serve as a control mechanism and help ensure public accountability, he said.
The issue on bribery practices was recently raised by former deputy governor of the state military think tank, the National Resilience Institute, Sayidiman Suryohadiprojo.
Addressing a seminar on the discord between indigenous and nonindigenous people here Tuesday, Sayidiman said nonindigenous businessmen were well known for the practice of oiling their businesses by paying bribes.
"Nonindigenous businessmen know precisely whether a government official is clean from bribery or not. And they also know how much money they have to spend to bribe officials for projects they are pursuing," Sayidiman said.
The Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd. issued earlier this year a report on a survey which named Indonesia as the most corrupt country in Asia. The same poor rating was also given to Indonesia last year.
The government has recently claimed that there had been a decline in the number of reported corruption cases over the past years, but conceded it could be due to the increasingly sophisticated mode of the practice.
There were 325 reported cases in the 1994/1995 fiscal year causing a financial loss of "Rp 1 trillion and some billions", 409 cases in 1995/1996 causing a Rp 208 billion (US$63 million) loss and 274 cases in 1996/1997 resulting in a loss of Rp 377 billion to the state.
In the 1997/1998 fiscal year, as of last September, the number of reported corruption cases has reached 234, causing the state a Rp 77 billion loss.
Ryaas called on prospective civil servants to mentally prepare themselves against bribery. "A government official should realize that being a civil servant would not make him or her wealthy," he said. (imn)