Government targets corruption under new plan
Berni K. Moestafa, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Legal experts call it wishful thinking, but a government- sponsored plan to eradicate corruption promises to speed up efforts to catch corruptors and recoup public funds.
Dubbed as "urgent and strategic enforcement action", the plan is one of five a joint government team is working on to the overhaul the country's discredited legal system.
Team member and director of law and human rights at the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) Diani Sadiawati said the government expected the plan would strengthen the public's waning confidence in the badly tainted legal system.
The plan sounded ambitious, she admitted, but was necessary in view of public distrust in the law.
"It may take only one successful case to show the public the government is serious in tackling corruption," Diani said on Friday.
Corruption has become endemic in Indonesia and commonplace among officials at virtually all levels in the legal system, according to a recent report by Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW).
Court cases over the past few months have ended with dubious verdicts, many of which hurt foreign companies and damaged Indonesia's image.
In January the joint team began its work on an action plan to reform the country's legal system. The plan is expected to be completed this year with programs running through 2004.
Partly funded by donor countries under the Partnership for Governance Reform, it covers four aspects: new legislation, and reform in the Attorney General's Office, the judiciary and the National Police.
The fifth deals with corruption and lays out five measures for dealing with corruption cases. These measures fall mainly under the jurisdiction of the Attorney General's Office.
The measures include efforts to speed up investigations into ongoing corruption cases, with the aim of improving the teamworking between related institutions, including the National Ombudsman Commission and the Public Servants' Wealth Audit Commission (KPKPN).
A second measure is to monitor cases prosecutors are currently dealing with to collect accurate information on them. A third is to analyze past investigations, charges by prosecutors and court verdicts.
Step four concerns efforts to recoup public funds in corruption cases where the defendant has died. The fifth and final measure is to calculate the amount of money that has been misappropriated, but which convicted corruptors are allegedly unable to repay.
Legal experts, however, said the plan resembled more a wish list than an action-oriented plan to get speedy results on the ground.
Noted lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis earlier that the plan seemed to rely too much on the bureaucracy for its implementation.
Prominent corporate lawyer Kartini Mulyadi said the plan reflected no sense of emergency.
She also raised concern over leaving the plan in the hands of the people responsible for the current state of the legal system.
"We have here a patient who does not admit he is sick," she said, referring to the institutions that made up the joint team.
ICW chairman Teten Masduki said that going after corruptors would be ineffective, without first cleaning up corruption within the judiciary.
"Can a program as extensive as this be implemented under the present political realities?" Teten asked during a Thursday discussion to comment on the action plan.