NU, Muhammadiyah form national anticorruption movement
Moch. N. Kurniawan and Wahyoe Boediwardhana The Jakarta Post Jakarta/Denpasar
Frustrated with the government's lackluster anticorruption measures, the country's two largest Muslim organizations have joined hands to fight corruption.
Nadhlatul Ulama (NU), which estimates membership at 40 million, and Muhammadiyah, with around 30 million members, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Wednesday to initiate a national anticorruption movement.
The MOU, facilitated by non-governmental organization the Partnership for Governance Reform, was signed by NU chairman Hasyim Muzadi, Muhammadiyah chairman Syafii Maarif and Partnership executive director H.S. Dillon.
"With the MOU, we want all NU members, as well as the people of this country, to raise awareness of the anticorruption movement. If many people back the movement, we hope this will encourage law enforcers to crack down on corrupters," Hasyim said.
Under the three-year MOU, NU and Muhammadiyah will develop an Islamic interpretation of anticorruption and publish leadership guidelines to promote good governance.
The two are also to carry out a national campaign on anticorruption, and implement a modern management system at their organizations based on the principles of accountability, transparency, integrity, participation and justice.
Hasyim said the MOU was a response to people's frustration with the present anticorruption measures taken by the government.
According to Hasyim, NU will also launch a public campaign urging people not to vote for leaders that have a history of corruption.
He also said that each and every NU and Muhammadiyah member would be punished if they were involved in corrupt practices.
Meanwhile, Syafii said the anticorruption movement would be broadened to include other, non-Islam organizations, so that it would truly become a national movement.
"We really want to trigger nationwide anger against corruption, at all levels, for bringing about poverty," he said.
He said corruption was a serious crime worse than theft, thus the punishment against corruption should be stiffer.
He expected the government to learn from China, which punishes those found guilty of corruption with death sentences.
Teten Masduki of the Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) and scholar Franz Magnis Suseno welcomed the anticorruption MOU.
Teten called on NU leaders, for example, to start rejecting any unclear donations to their schools and to stop giving "honorariums" to government officials.
But former president Abdurrahman Wahid expressed doubt that the coalition between Nadhlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah would succeed in eradicating the widespread corruption in the country.
"The cooperation between NU and Muhammadiyah is quite good. However, frankly speaking, I am not very convinced that they have enough courage to totally eradicate corruption, because this problem is created by the government," he said before hundreds of NU followers.
Indonesia ranks among the most corrupt countries in the world, indicating that the government has not done much to eradicate corruption since 1998, when the people ousted the corrupt Soeharto regime and called for reform.
The most obvious example is House speaker Akbar Tandjung, who retains his post, even though he has been convicted of corruption. He is appealing the verdict and in the meantime, has joined the presidential race.
The government's ambivalence in the fight against corruption is also indicated in its reluctance to set up a powerful AntiCorruption Commission (KPK) as mandated by the 2002 Anticorruption Law.
The KPK is to take over responsibilities of the police and the Attorney General's Office in handling big corruption cases.
The public opinion is that corruption has generally become worse, as during the Soeharto regime, only those in the upper echelon were corrupt, but now, corruption has spread down the ranks to even the lowest civil service official.