Muladi pledges antigraft body will be professional

JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Justice Muladi said on Monday all the members of the planned anticorruption commission would be professionals.

Muladi said at the House of Representatives the commission, an idea proposed last week by members of the Golkar faction in the House, would consist of, among others, prosecutors, police officers and legal experts.

Muladi asked the public not to be suspicious of the government's plan to set up the commission, saying the sole purpose behind the commission was to establish clean governance.

"The establishment of the Corruption Alleviation Commission is not strange. Other countries, Malaysia and Hong Kong for example, have formed similar bodies," Muladi said after attending the House's deliberations on an antigraft bill.

In Hong Kong, the anticorruption commission has the right to investigate corruption cases, while in Malaysia the commission has the right to press charges against those accused of corruption.

"The commission will certainly be independent ... and its membership will comprise professionals and intellectuals," Muladi said.

The minister, however, said the plan could be realized only two years after a bill on the establishment of the commission was passed into law.

"We need two years to socialize the new law and form the commission," Muladi said.

The House of Representatives endorsed a bill on clean governance in April, titled State Administrators Who Are Free from Corruption, Collusion and Nepotism. The bill obliges all government officials, including the president, ministers and managers of state-owned enterprises, to declare their assets when they begin and end their tenures with the state.

President B.J. Habibie has formally enacted the bill into law.

The law mandates the president, as head of state, chair a permanent commission of examiners to oversee state officials in executive, legislative and judicatory positions, and officials assigned to state companies.

The commission also has the power to audit state officials holding office, as long as the audit is not for investigative purposes.

The government has pledged to issue four government regulations and one presidential decree to accelerate the implementation of the law.

The House is still deliberating an antigraft bill which will update Anticorruption Law No.3/1973.

It is not clear whether the antigraft bill will serve as the legal basis for the establishment of the anticorruption commission. (prb)