Lack of trasnparancy at House opens door for graft

Tony Hotland, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Closing budget talks in the House of Representatives to the public enables lawmakers to engage in corruption, it was concluded at a discussion held following reports of the alleged "sale" of government relief funds.

Other things that facilitate corruption is the House's powerful authority in determining budget figures as well as the bureaucracy within the House, discussion participants said on Friday.

Legislature watchdog Formappi secretary-general Sebastian Salang said the three conditions were designed in such a way that they allowed corruption and collusion to thrive at the legislature.

"One is the fact that the House indeed has the biggest voice to determine the state budget. Then comes the exclusivity of the talks, which are closed to the public, thus enabling anyone, including brokers who have links to House members, to trade the information," he said.

Also, he added, bureaucracy within the House had forced local officials to pay fees to legislators to speed up deliberations and disbursements of funds for their regions.

"With the authority to propose fund amounts and to revise government proposals, there is room for any House member to promise a specific budget amount to local officials and get a percentage," Sebastian argued.

The time-worn practice of House members promising a specified budget amount to local officials for a percentage of the amount met a small, but promising obstacle when one legislator publicly revealed last week a document containing the names of lawmakers and amounts of relief funds, along with names of the areas they were allegedly "coordinating".

And it is not only the public that is shut out of budgetary meetings. Some legislators are too, especially those who are not members of the budgetary commission.

The commission, along with the Ministry of Finance, deliberates the state budget with the authority to approve, disapprove, revise and propose new figures.

Legislator Zainul Majdi, who was among those attending the discussion, also bemoaned the fact that the public was barred from state budget deliberations.

"Access to non-budgetary commission members is limited, and this, I feel, is kind of designed to give just a few the privilege of knowing about budget issues," he said.

Acknowledging the situation, budgetary commission member Tamsil Linrung said he once experienced the closed-door policy, although from the government's side.

Furthermore, he said, the practice of selling funds had been around for a long time but was difficult to prove due to lack of hard evidence.

"We can sense it but can't prove it. That's why we established a special verification team within the budgetary commission that double checks and verifies any budget proposals from the government," he said.

Zainul, who is a House disciplinary committee member, said the committee was seriously investigating the corruption allegations, adding that involving legal authorities, such as the police or the Corruption Eradication Commission, was feasible.

Concerning one relief fund case involving some Rp 1.97 trillion (US$191.26 million), Tamsil said there had been no money disbursed to date and that the committee had in fact returned the proposal to the government for revision.