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.