Students threaten to 'try' corruptors in North Sumatra
Students threaten to 'try' corruptors in North Sumatra
Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post, Medan
The Red and White Banner Student Forum (Formad) branches in
Medan State University and the North Sumatra University have
threatened to round up local officials who are involved in
corruption, which the students claim has reached an alarming
level in the province, unless law enforcers bring them to
justice.
"The students will establish people's courts to try big-time
corruptors in the province if law enforcers don't show their
commitment to staging an all out war against the rampant
corruption that has become a way of life among local officials,"
Formad said in a statement circulated to all students in the
universities' campuses here on Monday.
Formad also called on the local chapter of the Indonesian
Ulemas Council to issue an edict condemning corruption, which has
worsened the economic situation in the province, and requiring
the imprisonment of corruptors.
Separately, Irham Buana Nasution, director of the Medan Legal
Aid Institute, expressed his deep concern over the chronic
incidence of corruption and collusion among public servants and
representatives in the province.
"This rampant corruption will only be capable of being
eliminated if a state of emergency is declared, and all
corruption cases are brought to court and the corruptors punished
to the full extent of the law," he said.
Irham suspected that law enforcers were involved in collusion
with corruptors in that so far no corruptors had been brought to
trial.
He said the legal aid institute had reported 23 corruption
cases to the local prosecutor's office this year but none had
been processed.
"The 23 cases, which were complete with proof of the
corruption and witnesses, involved a number of local officials
and caused tens of millions of rupiah in material losses to the
government," he claimed.
He also said the local prosecutor's office had yet to
investigate corruption cases in state-owned palm oil companies
PTPN II in Tanjungmorawa and PTPN III in Tebing Tinggi, which, he
claimed, had caused around Rp 5 trillion in material losses to
the state.
"We have also received many reports on corruption in the North
Sumatra provincial secretariat, the local office of the forestry
ministry, and the religious affairs office. None of these have
been processed," he said, adding that a total of 500 corruption
cases had been submitted to the local prosecutor's office this
year.
Irham added that students should press the local prosecutor's
office to investigate all corruption cases.
Meanwhile, Chairuman Harahap, head of the state prosecutor's
office, said he needed more time to investigate these corruption
cases as to date his office was still focusing on the ones from
South Tapanuli, Toba-Samosir and Langkat regencies.
"We cannot investigate every case simultaneously," he said
while pledging that all cases would be processed in due course.
Harahap acknowledged that his office had received many reports
of rampant corruption in the state-owned oil palm plantations.
"We will start investigating these cases after we have
completed our investigations into the cases in the three
regencies that I mentioned previously.
"We have detected major irregularities in PTPN II, but our
investigation into this case still has to await the completion of
our investigations in the three regencies," he said.
Zahrin Piliang, chairman of the provincial legislature's
Commission I on administrative affairs, said the rampant
corruption among local officials in the province could well be
connected with the lack of a strong commitment to fighting it on
the part of state prosecutors.
"There is a clear evidence that the law enforcers themselves
are not clean. It will be impossible to cleanse the government of
corruption if the law enforcers themselves aren't clean," he
said, adding that, as in other provinces, corruption in North
Sumatra has become ingrained and would need a long time to be
weeded out.