Politicians not serious in handling Akbar scam

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.