Peril of war against corruption
By Peter Kerr
This is the first of two articles on efforts to fight corruption in recent months.
JAKARTA (JP): Legislator Laksamana Sukardi, speaking recently at a public discussion on legal reform, said a diplomat friend had told him over dinner that he had good news.
"He said Indonesia had been upgraded on the list of most corrupt countries to number three after Nigeria -- because we'd been able to bribe the organizing committee."
The joke raised a chorus of laughter from hundreds of businessmen, academics, diplomats and others gathered at Jakarta's Grand Hyatt hotel last month to consider the future of Indonesia.
Some commented wryly that the conference sub-title -- "Emerging from the Crisis" -- was rather optimistic, with the economy in tatters, the rupiah badly battered, outlying regions in turmoil, and the legislature deadlocked against a president whose supporters said they were willing to die for him.
It is almost three years since Indonesians threw out the Soeharto regime, and the dreams that millions of people had of clean, democratic government, legal reform and a purge of corruption lie thwarted and frustrated.
The factionalized House of Representatives is jostling for power and its rewards, determined to bring down an enfeebled President who is overwhelmingly regarded as having failed to light a way forward.
Soeharto and his family and cronies have for the most part escaped justice, institutional corruption remains rampant, the Supreme Court has defied efforts to weed out judges and officials alleged to be corrupt, and members of the post-Soeharto legislature are themselves accused of frustrating change.
Amid the disappointment of reformers is a warning that Indonesia is entering an even darker period, where "money politics" takes advantage of new democratic freedoms, and provincial "mini Soehartos" build their own corrupt empires under the banner of regional autonomy.
With May 21 marking the anniversary of Soeharto's fall, how can it be that Indonesia has failed so miserably to deliver on the anti-corruption ideals of the reformasi movement?
One reason, according to reformers who agree that change of any consequence will take longer than their lifetimes, is the systemic nature of corruption in Indonesia.
Preman (street toughs) patrol districts extracting protection money from businesses big and small, immigration staff demand kickbacks to process visas, police run extortion and protection rackets, lawyers bribe judges to win a case, companies pay millions of dollars extra to win contracts, and illegal loggers and miners bribe authorities to turn a blind eye.
Almost every country has corruption, but in Indonesia it is a pervasive and accepted part of life, drawn into and drawing into it the functions of law, government and other public institutions.
Indonesia may not be alone but it keeps the worst company, according to Transparency International, tying with Angola as the world's fourth most corrupt country after Nigeria, Yugoslavia, and in third place Ukraine and Azerbaijan.
In Asia, it is outranked only by Vietnam.
The Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy, which conducted the 12-nation Asian survey, observes that while graft exists almost everywhere, a country can distinguish itself in the ability of its legal system to fight the problem, the government's willingness to lead the effort, and the attitude of the local population,
Indonesia currently fails on all three counts.
A glaring recent example is the attempt to bring to trial allegedly corrupt members of Indonesia's highest judicial body, the Supreme Court.
Under attack from the government-sponsored Joint Anti- Corruption Team, on March 23 the court annulled the regulation which gave the team its legal basis.
Remarkably, the judge who chaired the adjudicating panel was also a legal adviser to one of the former Supreme Court justices accused by the anti-corruption team of bribery.
"So there is clear evidence of conflict of interest ... but there is no indication that (the decision) will be reviewed by the Supreme Court," lawyer and Hukum On-Line director Ibrahim Assegaf told the Hyatt conference, organized by consultants Van Zorge, Heffernan and Associates.
"... it is mind-boggling that the government, which is supposed to be supporting the joint investigating team as part of the executive, did not take any action ... to bring this issue back to the Supreme Court," Ibrahim said.
"So clearly this case shows there is no political will in the powers of the state."
The newly appointed Supreme Court chief justice, Professor Bagir Manan, last week denied there had been a conflict of interest and said there was no need to review the decision.
"I don't think there was a conflict of interest because Paulus Lotulung (who chaired the adjudicating panel) was not representing the judge in front of the court," Bagir told The Jakarta Post.
Lotulung had simply been a member of the judges' association which had questioned the former justice about the bribery allegation prior to the case coming before the Supreme Court, he said.
Certainly the court's ruling and government inaction raised barely a ripple of indignation from the public or media, inured to such perceived inconsistencies.
None of this was a surprise to Adi Andojo Soetjipto, the former deputy chief justice who blew the whistle on Supreme Court corruption in 1996.
Adi resigned as chairman of the anti-corruption team on March 19 after it had failed to prosecute any cases, complaining that the government had not given his group enough power.
In an interview with The Jakarta Post he estimated that about 85 per cent of Indonesia's judiciary was corrupt. Separately, Indonesia Corruption Watch has claimed that only five of 41 Supreme Court justices it investigated cannot be bought.
"As long as the current political situation exists in Indonesia, nothing will happen in fighting corruption," Adi said.
Despite assurances from President Abdurrahman Wahid, the government had not introduced a law giving the anti-corruption team adequate powers, he said.
And while the Supreme Court annulment was legally sound, it could have been delayed until August when the anti-corruption team will be wound up and a commission with greater powers established.
"The people's demand now is to fight corruption; why did the Supreme Court take that decision? The timing is not correct, I think ..."
Adi's successor as chairman of the anti-corruption team, Krissantono, said it would continue trying to prosecute two senior Supreme Court officials and three serving and former judges for allegedly taking bribes.
But, acknowledging the blow from the annulment, he said: "Maybe the hopes and expectations people have in us are too great in the short time (of the team's one-year life).
"People hope we can bring to trial a range of corruptors, but frankly speaking we cannot fulfill this expectation.
"We have no full authority like an anti-corruption commission and we have only had a short duration, only one year, to prepare for the Anti-Corruption Commission.
"But now we begin to touch the untouchable men ... only touch, maybe."
Bagir, who has publicly acknowledged the presence of corrupt judges and justices, criticised the anti-corruption team and said it would be best to await the "more effective" Anti-Corruption Commission.
He pledged to cooperate with the commission, and to investigate corrupt judges himself as a matter of urgency.
In the absence of immediate substantial reform, however, prominent lawyer and longstanding anti-corruption campaigner Todung Mulya Lubis is calling for constitutional change.
"I think the government has not been serious about fighting corruption: not under Soeharto, not under Habibie, nor under Wahid," Todung told The Jakarta Post.
He supported Abdurrahman's proposal to reverse the burden of proof, which would require people accused of corruption to prove they gained their wealth legally, but said it would not work as suggested.
"He knows the judiciary is very corrupt so he knows it is not going to work," Todung said.
"The agencies who deal with corruption are equally corrupt, and they act with impunity."
Constitutional change to introduce electoral and judicial reforms was vital.
"We need to change with a clear paradigm for transparency of the judiciary, and for regional autonomy."
The writer is Deputy Foreign Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper. He is spending four months at The Jakarta Post under a Medialink fellowship, funded by the Australia-Indonesia Institute.