Shelving corruption cases

The confirmation of the Attorney General's Office (AGO) -- that it had decided to drop corruption cases against former president Soeharto's daughter Siti "Tutut" Hardiyanti Rukmana, former timber baron Prajogo Pangestu and tollroad developer Djoko Ramiadji -- served only to strengthen the public perception of the government as acutely lacking the determination to crack down on graft.

The AGO decision was quietly made in June, but it was only revealed to the public on Thursday in a statement that, instead of providing the public with accountability, raised more questions regarding the technical competence and integrity of public prosecutors.

Compare this to the great fanfare and drama in which the three corruption suspects were summoned for investigations at the AGO. The manner in which the public prosecutors initially handled the graft cases was so convincing that the public had really believed that the government was determined to dig deeply and expose the roots of corruption, which was one of the underlying causes of the 1997 economic crisis.

But then, this controversial decision is only a small episode within the bizarre profile of law enforcement in the country -- where corruption has long been perceived as endemic, systemic and deeply institutionalized -- involving the whole system of the government, notably the judiciary, public prosecutors and the police.

Just witness the very small number of people so far jailed after being found guilty of corruption, even though the public and international corruption watchdogs have always ranked the government among the most corrupt in the world, along with those of countries such as Angola and Nigeria.

In fact, most high-profile graft suspects or defendants -- who generated weeks of headline stories during their initial investigations -- eventually either escaped justice on technicalities or got only very light sentences.

The AGO argument that the corruption charge against Prajogo, a crony of Soeharto -- related to his exploitation of hundreds of thousands hectares of forests in South Sumatra -- was not valid because he had caused no loss to the state, was an insult to the public's sense of justice. After all, Prajogo's acquisition of his vast forest concession had in the first place caused controversy, let alone his questionable use of a huge amount of government reforestation funds.

Likewise, the AGO's inability to establish legal evidence of corruption in Tutut's fuel pipeline project in Central Java and in Djoko's tollroad project in Jakarta only validated the public perception that justice is indeed discriminatory.

True, the laws on corruption and business transactions are sometimes ambiguous, containing many loopholes that can either be exploited by high-caliber lawyers, or make it extremely difficult for public prosecutors to prove their cases beyond any reasonable doubt. Judges too often are not able to comprehend the complexity of business and financial transactions.

Even in many developed countries with well established justice systems, getting convictions for economic crimes often turns out to be much more difficult than putting bank robbers or drug dealers in jail.

Nevertheless, when most big corruption cases, involving businesspeople or senior officials with powerful backing, fail to reach court or are eventually thrown out of court due to a lack of legal evidence, as has taken place in the country, there must be many things fundamentally wrong within the legal system.

There is, however, another fundamental shortcoming, that has made the government's drive against corruption seemingly hopeless and a miserably lost cause. That is the absence of credible leadership.

The experience of most other countries -- with success stories in fighting graft -- show that to be effective, an anti- corruption campaign requires the strongly-committed leadership of the government. Even better, if the commitment comes from the highest levels of the state.

But, in Indonesia, the public perception of institutionalized corruption undermines the credibility of the national leadership. Consequently, a moral hazard has been created as most big white- collar crimes seem to be worth the risk, generating a vicious circle in which an anti-graft strategy is hard to launch.