Politicians not serious in handling Akbar scam
Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The House of Representatives is playing for time and lacks seriousness in its plan to investigate the alleged involvement of its speaker, Akbar Tandjung, in a Rp 40 billion (US$4 million) corruption case, analysts say.
They charge that the politicians are exploiting trivial procedural errors as a pretext for postponing a debate on the formation of a special investigating committee.
The schedule has already been put back from Nov. 22 to this Wednesday on the grounds that not all House leaders had obtained copies of a petition by 50 legislators demanding the establishment of such a special committee.
"Everything (about Akbar's involvement) is crystal clear," said A.S. Hikam of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI). "They were very eager to set up an investigating committee when Gus Dur (former president Abdurrahman Wahid) was allegedly involved in a similar case.
"There are inconsistencies here," said Hikam, who was minister of research and technology during Abdurrahman's 20-month administration until it fell in July 2001.
Abdurrahman was impeached by the People's Consultative Assembly for misusing Rp 35 billion obtained from the State Logistics Agency (Bulog).
Akbar has been questioned by the Attorney General's Office for allegedly siphoning off Rp 40 billion in nonbudgetary funds from Bulog to his Golkar Party in 1999 when he was minister/state secretary under then president B.J. Habibie.
Akbar has sworn that the Bulog funds were distributed in the form of staple foodstuffs to help the poor during the economic crisis in 1999.
Hikam is skeptical that the House will set up an investigating committee into the "Buloggate II" affair, as the scandal has already been dubbed. He said it was an intricate case that many politicians from different parties would want to see covered up in their own interests.
People in the political elite were protecting each other, he said at a seminar organized by the Indonesian Christian Participation (Parkindo) organization over the weekend.
Mulyana W. Kusuma, a member of the General Elections Commission (KPU), said that the way the House was handling Buloggate II had only reinforced his skepticism about the government's commitment to combating corruption.
He pointed out that the government would face serious difficulties in trying to investigate cases of corruption, collusion and nepotism committed in the past as the old political players still had clout in the corridors of power.
Although the Attorney General's Office has interrogated many allegedly corrupt cronies of former president Soeharto, less than 10 percent of some 80 high-profile corruption cases have been taken to court, he said.
Mulyana said the many laws, People's Consultative Assembly decrees and other regulations had yet to be enforced as part of the effort to punish corruptors.
"There is no correlation between the number of regulations and the effort to fight corruption. Whether the effort to fight corruption will succeed depends very much on the political will of the powerholders," he added.
Jimmy Palapa of the Jakarta-based Bung Karno University said that the creation of a Buloggate II House special committee would be a challenge for the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan), the largest faction in the House.
The Akbar case would become a litmus test for the Megawati administration's seriousness in combating corruption, Jimmy said.