Saldi and his expectations of Susilo

Saldi and his expectations of Susilo

Syofiardi Bachyul Jb, Contributor/Padang

Corruption is rife in Indonesia and its eradication is highly dependent upon the country's president.

Throughout the administration of President Megawati Soekarnoputri, only the regions seemed to be serious about eliminating corruption.

In West Sumatra province 43 members of the provincial legislative assembly have been convicted of graft. It is public knowledge, however, that more corruption can be found in the corridors of power in Jakarta.

"If the president is actively encouraging the eradication of corruption, hopefully the drive to eradicate it in Indonesia will be more intensive than before. In a patriarchal society, the leaders must provide a good example," Forum of Concern for West Sumatra (FPSB) coordinator Saldi Isra said.

Saldi, also a lecturer at the School of Law at Andalas University, Padang, has this year been named a joint recipient of Bung Hatta Anti-Corruption Award. The other recipient is Solok Regent Gamawan Fauzi. The two will receive the award at Jakarta Convention Center on Tuesday night.

Comparing Megawati, the incumbent president, and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who is almost certain to succeed Megawati as Indonesia's first directly elected president, Saldi said Susilo had shown a clearer commitment than Megawati to eradicating corruption.

"In his campaign for the presidential runoff, he openly said that he would lead the drive to eradicate corruption," he said.

To translate this commitment into reality, Susilo must appoint cabinet ministers, particularly those dealing with the law, who were strongly committed to eradicating corruption and not implicated in any graft, Saldi said.

The positions of the attorney general and the chief of the national police should go to capable and credible people only, he said.

"It is impossible to speedily eradicate corruption if the key people in the cabinet lineup are embroiled in one way or another in corruption," he said.

Susilo should then show both his cabinet and the public that he leads a modest life. He and his family should not be engaged in business dealings during his presidential tenure and should declare their wealth to the public.

"If he can do these two things, Susilo will have quite a big asset with which to start realizing his commitment to eradicate corruption," Saldi said.

Aside from internal affairs, Susilo must be able in the first 100 days of his administration to encourage the reopening of high-profile, major corruption cases that had yet to be thoroughly settled.

Cases that have attracted great public attention include, among others, alleged corruption in national banking circles, the bribery of House members from 1999 to this year and the Bank Indonesia Liquidation Support Loan (BLBI) scheme.

He should also restart Soeharto's trial although it would be impossible to settle this case in his first one hundred days as president, Saldi said.

Then, Susilo must encourage quicker investigation into graft cases in the regions and identify the reasons why corruption eradication had been going on at a snail's pace.

"The new president should also scrap the practice of necessitating consent from the president or the home minister for an investigation into corruption case that involves a government official.

"The president should authorize prosecutor's offices to investigate government officials without having to wait for his consent," he said.

It was also important for the president to find ways to ensure graft suspects would not hide behind the excuse of being sick to avoid being investigated, as former president Soeharto and chairman of the Confederation of Primary Cooperatives Association (INKUD) Nurdin Halid had done.

If Susilo took all these steps and strongly encouraged their implementation, the eradication of corruption would become a reality, not only at the bottom but also at the top, he said.

"What is happening now is that the drive to eradicate corruption has begun at the lowest levels, for example, the exposure of graft cases involving members of a regional legislative assembly.

"If a similar drive also began at the top, at some point these two drives would meet and this would mean the eradication of corruption from top to bottom. In such a way, there would be no discrimination in the investigation into graft cases," he said.

It was quite promising, he said, to hear Susilo strongly repeat he would accept all the Partnership for Reform's proposed 20 programs of acceleration for good governance, which his administration would institute in the first 100 days.

If the government followed up on this, it could sign an integrity pact on the implementation of good governance and clean government, in the future.

"Solok Regency, under its regent, Gamawan Fauzi, has signed the pact at the regental level, so why can't the central government do likewise at the national level? We need a strong leader who can make this commitment and if the new president is ready for this, it will send a strong signal to lower levels," said Saldi, who is a father of two daughters.

An obstacle that might stand in Susilo's way, Saldi said, was his military background. It is generally perceived that business networks in the military circles are fraught with corruption, collusion and nepotism. To change this practice poses a great challenge to Susilo.

"The victory of SBY (Susilo) and his running mate, Jusuf Kalla, in the presidential runoff indicates that the public are pinning great hopes on them for a change.

"People did not want to see Megawati reelected as president because she failed to eradicate corruption. If Susilo fails to follow up on this hope, he will simply be repeating the mistakes of his predecessors," he said.

Saldi Isra was born in Paninggahan, Solok, West Sumatra, on August 20, 1968. After earning his Master of Public Administration degree from the Institute of Postgraduate Studies and Research, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 2001, he returned to his former university to teach in the department of constitutional law and in the postgraduate law program.

Married to Leslie Annisaa Taufik, since 1995 Taufik has been a prolific writer of opinion pieces on matters related to constitutional law in national newspapers.

During the past three months, four to eight of his articles have been published each month. Mostly about graft eradication, the panel of judges took them into account when naming him as one of the joint recipients of the Bung Hatta Anticorruption Award.

Driven by Saldi the FPSB successfully investigated and exposed a corruption case involving Rp 6.4 billion in state funds in the West Sumatra 2002 provincial budget, an act leading to the conviction of 43 members of the provincial legislative assembly.

"Although I am formally receiving the award, I'm considering it a citation for FPSB, a forum where we all work together. On the one hand, we are happy for the appreciation given to our hard work in the FPSB, but on the other, we deem it a great challenge to maintain our level of achievement," he said.

Following the revelation of the graft case in West Sumatra, he said, the province had often been associated with widespread corruption.

However, now that two people from the province have been named recipients of the Bung Hatta award, it is obvious a serious drive to eradicate corruption has also begun.