Mr. Clean's crusade
The Indonesian Society for Transparency, which was launched here early this week, is not organizationally related to the well-known Transparency International, the Berlin-based anticorruption pressure group. But the society's mission and its work methods, as stated in its founding charter, will be very similar to the noble crusade which has been conducted since 1993 by Transparency International, well-known for its annual corruption score table of 53 countries.
It is hardly necessary to detail the background developments that motivated the 32 senior citizens -- including former and incumbent cabinet ministers, businesspeople, lawyers, economists, senior journalists, clergymen, human-rights activists and a three-star Army general -- to found the society.
Even now, more than two months after the opening of a Pandora's box of the abuses of power under Soeharto's 32-year authoritarian rule, we are still stunned to find how Soeharto, his family and cronies had massively plundered the nation's and state's wealth.
Society is quite right in its thinking that fighting corruption is by itself not enough for the right, overall cure for the social and political diseases left behind by the Soeharto regime. An independent organization that is open to all citizens and which is concerned about the future of the nation is needed to organize a nationwide campaign to educate people on the importance of public transparency and accountability both in state affairs and in society, including the business world.
Former minister of finance Mar'ie Muhammad, respectably known as Mr. Clean, who was elected the first chairman of the society, should be all too familiar with how many of the decision-making processes under the Soeharto administration were made secretly and dishonestly for private gains.
But the society, locally called Masyarakat Transparansi Indonesia (MTI), is different from the political pressure groups set up over the past few weeks which make the political monitoring of the Habibie administration their main mission. MTI's mission also is much broader and its organization is better structured than the Indonesian Corruption Watch which focuses its attention on the recovery of assets perceived to be have been illegally obtained by Soeharto and his family.
MTI will undertake research, workshops, case studies to formulate and implement the broad concept of transparency in the fields of law, economy, defense, security, social and cultural affairs. It will thus emphasize the need for the development of a system of national integrity.
It will closely monitor how public policies are processed and implemented and launch well-organized campaigns to make corruption and other forms of abuses of power a public issue through mass media in order to exert public pressure on the government and society to act against corruption.
Corruption has now become so global an issue that even such multilateral agencies as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which previously treated graft as an internal political problem of a state outside their purview, have developed a systematic framework for combating corruption in the countries under their aid programs. Twenty-nine developed countries grouped in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development will enforce later this year the Convention on Combating Corruption of Foreign Officials in International Business Transactions they adopted in Paris late last year.
The worldwide campaign has been prompted by the findings of numerous empirical studies that corruption cripples development by undermining the rule of law and weakening the institutional foundations on which economic growth depends.
Given the magnitude and urgency of the problem of corruption in the country, and in view of the fact that corruption often takes place in international business, it is highly advisable that MTI immediately start networking with international organizations and pressure groups already well experienced in the campaign against corruption. Starting alone from scratch will not enable MTI to gain the public attention that is badly needed to jump-start the momentum for its crusade.
A partnership with Transparency International, for example, would enable MTI to accelerate its start-up operations by learning from the case studies, experiences, work references and pilot projects already developed by the Berlin-based lobby group and its national chapters in more than 72 countries.
All in all, though, MTI cannot by itself fully accomplish its mission. The campaign against corruption should be undertaken as an endless education process. It is a multifaceted drive to develop a culture of high moral and ethical standards both in government and society, including the business community. This noble crusade actually is only part of grander things like democracy, free press and open market economy.