Improper meddling?

Improper meddling?

This is a final follow-up to attempts to get feedback on a
complaint about an official in the Medan Immigration Office who
extorted many millions of rupiah at a time (in premonetary crisis
value) from expatriates and Indonesians. Finally, on Dec. 26, I
received a letter from the Director General of Immigration Mr.
Pranowo, who explained that following an investigation in July
1998, official X had been issued a strong reprimand and was named
Immigration Attache at the Indonesian Consulate General in Los
Angeles.

What is disturbing (apart from the fact that official X seems
to have been more rewarded than disciplined for his malpractice)
is that Mr. Pranowo's letter to me included an admonition that by
continuing to follow up my complaint I went too far: "You've gone
too far with your meddling in the established procedures of our
Directorate." One can only marvel at this disingenuousness that
openly characterizes a complaint about public corruption as
"improper meddling in the Directorate's established procedures."

But is this a subtle threat? If a foreign investor in
Indonesia files a corruption complaint and expects the complaint
to be followed up as promised, will he/she then be warned that
this is not proper? Does the State Minister for Investment Hamzah
Haz consider Mr. Pranowo's warning an acceptable response to an
investor's problem with a corrupt official? Must foreign
investors (and their expatriate staff) who are asked to make
payoffs keep silent? Is there nowhere we can safely report
problems of corruption, collusion and nepotism (KKN)? On the one
hand, the government is soliciting foreign investment and
promising that they are dedicated to clean government; on the
other hand, its subordinate officials threaten those investors
like myself who ask for help against corrupt officials. Will the
real government of Indonesia please stand up?

Because for five months there was no response to my many
requests for feedback about this complaint, in November 1998 I
sent an e-mail to President Habibie requesting assistance from
his office. Mr. Pranowo's response referred to this e-mail. Now
we know that President Habibie or a designated staff member reads
e-mails and takes effective action on them. This is an
encouraging sign of the President's accessibility and
responsiveness. I thank President Habibie for the follow-up from
his office.

Indonesia is no longer a collection of villages ruled by
feudal chiefs. The feudal president has been replaced by a 20th
century well-educated technocrat who has lived in an open,
progressive democratic country for a number of years. President
Habibie will not, we trust, countenance subordinates who misuse
their authority to intimidate or retaliate against those who
report and follow up corruption. If President Habibie and General
Wiranto are looking for the forces that are endangering their
administration, they might want to look to persons within their
own government bureaucracy who resist reformation by protecting
those guilty of KKN.

I thank Mr. Pranowo for his letter, which at last has
confirmed the outcome of our complaint: Official X had his hands
slapped and was sent on his merry way to L.A. Many Indonesian
reformers will appreciate the price the bureaucracy pays for such
a failure in self-reform.

DONNA K. WOODWARD

Medan, North Sumatra