Graft exposed, who cares?

The audit findings that were reported to the House of Representatives by the Development Finance Comptroller (BPKP) and the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) on Wednesday and Thursday respectively only serve to validate the assessments made by international corruption-watch organizations that list the Indonesian government as one of the most corrupt in the world.

The Comptroller (government internal audit body) said its auditing of state budget implementation and a number of state companies for the whole of fiscal 2000 and the first semester of 2001, had uncovered 14,541 instances of deviations from budgetary rules and irregularities in financial management that resulted in Rp 9.5 trillion (US$9.5 billion) in state losses.

The audit body reported that in the period under review it had submitted 49 cases of corruption with sufficient legally admissible evidence to the Attorney General's Office for further prosecution. These cases involved a total of Rp 270 billion.

The Supreme Audit Agency released no less shocking findings on Thursday, disclosing the uncovering of almost 1,900 instances of aberrations and breaches of budgetary rules and financial management procedures in state budget implementation and a number of state companies in 2000 and the first semester of 2001. These resulted in nearly Rp 39 trillion in state losses.

Those who take an interest in the summaries of the semester audit reports produced by the two audit bodies will certainly find nothing surprising in the latest findings. Their earlier semester reports that were released last October also revealed thousands of instances of irregularities, deviations and breaches of budgetary rules and public finance management procedures.

It is nonetheless shocking to learn from the auditors' reports that the government seems to be so powerless in combating malfeasance in the public sector despite its oft repeated pronouncements that clean government and good governance are at the top of its list of priorities.

In fact, so few have been the corruption cases that have been brought to court that the auditors' reports look like almost being a waste of time and effort.

True, given the difficulty of finding evidence that is admissible in court, many of the instances of irregularities or aberrations discovered in the management of the public finances are not amenable to further prosecution.

But there is no doubt that the findings demonstrate a relaxed stance on the part of the government as regards malfeasance. The discovery of thousands of instances of deviations every year only shows that the government's tolerance of breaches of rules or deviations from regulations seems to have reached such a level that things that cannot immediately be classified as outright corruption are taken lightly. The government seems not to realize that a high level of discipline starts with strictly abiding by the rules of the game, that is to say every provision of the law no matter how petty it may seem to be.

Another development that makes us increasingly doubtful about the government's resoluteness in fighting corruption is the acknowledgement by the chairmen of both audit agencies that most government institutions remain ignorant of their audit findings and recommendations.

Obviously, part of the problem is caused by the lack of enforcement power on the part of both audit bodies and the lack of clarity in the mandate, scope, role and degree of independence of the Supreme Audit Agency and the Comptroller as the government's internal auditors. Nor is there a systematic follow- up mechanism for ensuring action on the auditors' findings.

Worse still, as the Supreme Audit Agency's chairman Satrio Budihardjo Joedono admitted, many institutions simply refuse to provide access to his auditors, arguing that they had already been audited by the Comptroller.

If the government is really serious about its program to develop good governance in order to create clean government, it should immediately realign its internal audit framework and rationalize the roles and responsibilities of both audit bodies, which sometimes duplicate each other's work. It need not wait for the enactment of the bill on the auditing of the state accounts that is still under deliberation in the House of Representatives (DPR).

Transparency and accountability, as the basic principles of good governance, need appropriate institutions and public reporting requirements, and further demand a central agency to enforce fiscal management discipline.