Probe into farmers' loan scheme?

When the farmers' loan scheme, known as KUT, was launched, there were doubts about whether it would actually be effective in improving farmers' lives. The scheme has too many loopholes which agency officials in charge of its implementation at the central government and regional administration levels -- representing the State Ministry for Cooperatives and Small/Medium Enterprises, channeling banks, relevant non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and relevant regional administrations -- can easily cash in on to fatten their own pockets and finance the campaigns of certain political parties.

A plan to conduct a probe into irregularities in the implementation of this scheme is already too late now. Even if the perpetrators can be caught, it will be next to impossible to put them in jail because of their crimes (considering that corruption, collusion and nepotism practices are still rampant among law enforcers) and make their punishment a stern warning to anybody hoping to gain personal benefits from this loan scheme.

It may be safely assumed that the funds they have siphoned off have been exhausted, making it very difficult to get the money back pursuant to the prevailing stipulations.

Regarding this matter, Mr. Adi Sasono, former minister of cooperatives, argued that it was highly unfair to make an issue of this loan scheme, involving only a total of Rp 8.3 trillion allocated to some 6 million farmers, while the backlog of debts totaling Rp 900 trillion incurred by 2,000 business tycoons were yet to be settled.

His argument seems to suggest that farmers deserve to enjoy these loans and that even if the loans have become bad debts, they are nothing compared with the backlog of debts built up by the tycoons, particularly allowing for the fact that the rate of return cannot be guaranteed because of the credibility of the system and the management.

It may be easily accepted by people that the failure in the repayment of farmers' loans is attributable solely to a harvest failure, a fertilizer scarcity or any other number of reasons, therefore vindicating the farmers of any blame.

Unfortunately, it is also many people's belief that this farmers' loan scheme is full of fictitious names of farmers, explanations fabricated to enable the funds to be channeled to non-farmer recipients such as corrupt people from government agencies, NGOs, banks, etc.

As long as the principle of inverse establishment of evidence or the principle of presumption of guilt is not applied in the probe into corruption, including this KUT matter, never dream that the corrupt people involved in KUT irregularities can be arrested. These people will simply go on with their corruption until Indonesia is declared bankrupt.

In the absence of the principle of inverse establishment of evidence, a probe into KUT will never frighten anybody or end up in anybody being prosecuted. As time goes by, everything will pass and be forgotten (the perpetrators will create distractions and protect one another). As a result, all sorts of corruption will simply come and go on the stage where a colossal performance of "The most sophisticated corruption" takes place.

This performance will show to us that Indonesia is ranked third in the world in terms of corruption and, also, that not a single high profile perpetrator of corruption has been charged and sentenced in proportion with his crime.

Only God's hand can save Indonesia from bankruptcy, a condition that is not unlikely to hit Indonesia because corruption continues to be committed on an increasingly larger scale. In this country, severe action can never be taken against the bigwigs of corruption because the country's leaders still allow themselves to be slaves to creature comforts.

H. WISDARMANTO GS.

Jakarta