Graft in KPU Jakarta: More corruption or just rumor?

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

As long as no-one in the government is touched, then law enforcers will bravely investigate a case. This is the message we get from the fact that investigations into alleged corruption in the Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPU Jakarta) have been extremely fast when compared to other investigations into similar cases involving funds from the Jakarta city budget.

Why? Because the Commission is an independent body, and during the elections many political parties were probably upset with the behavior of Commission executives. Therefore there is little sympathy for them when they get sprung for allegedly stealing state money.

In less than a month, the Jakarta Prosecutors's Office was able to name three suspects, detain them, and confiscate assets that were allegedly purchased with the money that was stolen.

Another surprising move was that prosecutors treated reports from the City Council's Commission A on legal and administrative affairs as strong evidence.

The prosecutors also broke with their traditional way of investigation in not asking for prior recommendation from the City Audit Agency (Bawasda).

Bawasda, which is part of the Jakarta city bureaucracy, has frequently been strongly criticized for its poor performance in disclosing corruption involving high ranking officials of the city administration.

Therefore, the decision of Jakarta prosecutors to pick up the corruption case without asking permission from the auditing agency will hopefully set a precedent in the investigation of other cases of embezzlement of funds from the city budget.

If the Jakarta Prosecutors' Office did not take the initiative in investigating the alleged graft in KPU Jakarta, then the audit report would have been ignored just like all the other ignored reports.

As an example, in 2003 the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) reported alleged irregularities in the spending of funds in several agencies under the city administration worth some Rp 830 billion (US$85.13 million).

Ignoring the BPK report, Bawasda said there was no corruption in the agencies mentioned. Police questioned a number of officials in connection with the report, but later stopped the investigation, citing lack of evidence.

Another high profile corruption case involved several officials from the city administration and seven councillors, who received "double financed trips" of their visits to South Africa, Japan, and Australia in October, 2000.

Apart from allegedly receiving travel allowances of between US$5,000 to $10,000 from the city-owned PT. Pembangunan Jaya Ancol, each person also received Rp 52 million in travel allowances from the city budget.

The case of alleged corruption in the KPU Jakarta was in fact not that different from many other corruption cases that have been ignored.

The disclosure of the alleged graft started from the curiosity of several councillors about newspaper' reports of several fake bills for renting houses in the Kepulauan Seribu regency, which were used as the election body's secretariat.

Commission A followed up on the reports by summoning KPU Jakarta members and staff as well as relevant officials under the city administration to seek information about the expenditure of Rp 168.6 billion for organizing three elections in 2004.

KPU Jakarta failed to give satisfactory explanations for a number of allegations including mark-ups in procuring vests, flag poles, and rent for houses in Kepulauan Seribu regency. They could also not explain why they did not pay Rp 4.2 billion in taxes.

Currently, prosecutors have detained three suspects -- KPU Jakarta chairman Muhammad Taufik, KPU Jakarta member A Riza Patria, and treasurer Neneng Euis Palupi.

Investigations into the case are still far from finished. But at least it raises some hope that other corruption cases will also receive equally harsh treatment from law enforcers.

Many viewed the investigation as shock therapy in an effort to eradicate corruption in the capital, in the hope that it would have a domino effect of investigations into corruption in national institutions.

The public still has to wait to see what further action the prosecutors, police and the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) will take to uncover other corruption cases in the city, which actually could be resolved quite easily if the spirit of law enforcers was high, as seemed to be the case with KPU Jakarta.

There are still many indications that corruption, collusion and nepotism (KKN) are still rampant in the tendering process for projects and procurement of goods and services in the city administration.

First, many tenders for projects, goods and services were only announced in newspapers with low readership.

Second, visitors to City Hall will notice a group of people gathering on the left wing of the hall. Many of them are company executives, seeking fortunes by 'facilitating' companies, which will be decided as winners in certain tenders.

Their presence is to give the impression that the tender process is complying with the rules. For that, a winning candidate needs six or seven front companies to take part in the tender bidding process. The front companies, however, would be aware all along that they were not going to win the tender.