On clean governance

While making every effort to reestablish public and international trust in the government to climb out of our devastating economic crisis, state officials must also pay attention to increasing public demands for clean governance. This call is no less urgent than other public complaints because corruption, which has long reached alarming proportions, has also worsened the ever-widening social gap.

In an apparent effort to assuage the public, President Soeharto instructed all cabinet ministers Tuesday to report to him their personal wealth and that of their spouses. Provincial governors are obliged to report their wealth as well. The coordinating minister for development supervision and state administrative reform will hold all of the personal asset reports.

The President seems to have no intention of making the wealth of his high-ranking officials public, possibly for reasons of privacy. But the government has guaranteed that in case a minister is charged with corruption, authorities can reference the minister's registered personal assets.

At the same meeting, the President also ordered the ministers to donate their first year's salaries to poverty-alleviation programs. Many people have expressed sympathy for the ministers saying the officials will have to live modestly if obliged to donate their entire salaries. But people who have watched TV interviews with the newly installed ministers in their luxury homes tend to conclude that the ministers' lifestyles will not be overly affected because they already live affluently.

So we believe the focus should be placed on the presidential instruction for ministers to report their personal assets. This order is, in fact, nothing new in the history of our republic. There have been such regulations before on top of periodical anti-graft campaigns bearing various grandiose code names. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of these past regulations and campaigns have impressed few people.

Indonesians have become quite well-informed of anti-graft drives in some other developing countries, where officials' assets are publicly announced giving the people a sense of ownership in the fight to clean up their government. Authorities in some of these countries also work on public tips concerning corrupt practices.

Indonesians have a right to be involved in the fight against corruption because unethical practices by state officials are nothing less than a breach of the people's trust.

Corrupt officials here seem to enrich themselves with impunity, making no effort to hide their illegal practices. Many actually flaunt their ill-gotten affluence. These officials seem to think that they are just a small segment in a vicious cycle which has become a part of our national culture.

Many reports place our government as the most corrupt in Asia, while the foreign media has repeatedly printed figures on the huge wealth of certain high-ranking officials and their cronies here. The authorities have never denied the charges in a convincing manner, much less sue the media companies. Instead, the government repeatedly defends itself with the same old cliche, saying that this country has strong judicial mechanisms to fight corruption.

The statement, of course, bears some truth. We do have comprehensive laws to combat corruption. But while building a system is one thing, enforcing it is another. The government needs to focus on creating more effective ways to enforce the system. So far, even the government's internal audit agency has repeatedly complained that many ministries have been reluctant to follow up on corruption findings with necessary actions. In the end, all of this will depend on the government's political will.