The DPR whistle-blowers

B. Herry-Priyono, Independent Researcher & Lecturer, Driyarkara School of Philosophy, herryprb@lse.ac.uk, Jakarta

After the crude game of money in the Jakarta gubernatorial election, now is the turn of "envelope politics" at the heart of the House of Representatives (DPR). No doubt the (mal)practice has been taking place for as long as we could remember. The latest case involves the admission of Indira Damayanti and Meilono Soewondo -- members of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, PDI-Perjuangan -- that they have just returned a bribe of US$ 1 million from the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA) during the sale of Bank Niaga.

The IBRA issued denials, which was expected, given the yawning gap between factual truth and legal truth. The denial is not a statement of truth, but a challenge for the whistleblowers to present legal evidence. As always, it is at this point that most scandals simply slide into oblivion. Although the case is appalling, you can hardly take things seriously given that legal procedures in this country could easily be bought out.

Indeed, one of our predicaments is how nonsensical and simultaneously crucial it is to talk about law. Money dictates the game, and it is through this "rule" that vicious circles have become more vicious. Even in parliament, the market rules.

"Parliamentary politics" is enormously important, but now it is catastrophically dead. It did not die of natural causes. It was murdered. Who killed it? Some legislators, politicians, businesses, bureaucrats and other brokers of power.

The good news is, unlike under the New Order regime, more and more whistleblowers are coming up, whether in the case of the Jakarta gubernatorial race or in the sale of Bank Niaga. Indira and Meilono were, for whatever reasons, simply blowing the whistle.

As expected, some of their co-legislators were quick to deride them. Afni Ahmad, Head of the Reform Faction at the House, rebuked: "What the hell is Meilono's purpose, looking for sensation?" Similarly Erwin Pardede, member of the Commission IV from PDI Perjuangan, questioned the whistleblowers' motives. "I'm afraid this is simply an agenda to crush the PDI and push the DPR to the corner. We surely need to reform the DPR, but don't turn DPR into a toothless tiger as it was during the New Order!" (Kompas, Oct. 6). If this is really the way that many in the legislature think this Republic should be run, then we may be truly doomed.

First, human motives, Sirs, are like a thick forest no one can ever get completely familiar with. To question someone's motive is like barking up the wrong tree. Perhaps Indira and Meilono blew the whistle because they maintain their principles, could no longer stand their disgust, or lost their business bids, or perhaps because the money offered was too small. Whichever!

Second, if the raison d'etre of political parties is to democratize power over the way this Republic is being run, perhaps some parties deserve to be dissolved when they no longer carry that mission. Third, the fear of the DPR becoming a toothless tiger must be a joke. Insofar as many members of the DPR themselves reveal, the DPR has never been toothless when it comes to money grabbing.

But we, ordinary citizens, already know how toothless the DPR has been when it comes to fighting for the interests of the ordinary people like peasants, workers, and urban poor.

Whatever the motives of the two defiant legislators, more whistleblowers are needed. The reason is simple. We have long agonized over how to reform many things in this Republic. The problem is, there is no way of knowing what "good governance" is unless we know first what "bad governance" is, as much as we cannot talk about justice unless we know what injustice is. That is why more whistleblowers should be welcomed.

So what the two legislators did (Indira has now resigned) is less an act of defamation than a great service for our common cause. If there is no way of knowing what a corruption-free parliament is unless we know first the corrupt one, then blowing the whistle is not an act of treason but emancipation. Indeed, in any society the vested-interested parties are the ones with the most to hide about the way things work. Very often therefore truthful disclosures are bound to sound like defamation rather than objective exposure.

Usually the exposed parties would become reckless, raising some standard, thoughtless questions: "Why on earth are they blowing the whistle? Don't they need money? Are they themselves clean?" For sure, no one can possibly live by money alone. Nor is anyone living under the sun pure white as cotton, for once we move in time and space we are bound to mess up with the morass of life. But all this is also beside the point.

The point is about how popular mandate is being exercised. The case of the IBRA envelopes is a first-order damage on popular mandate. There is no such thing as donations without strings attached -- albeit invisible strings. There is a connection between millions of rupiah or dollars placed in an envelope, and a "bent policy". Such cases are only rarely exposed because they are so hard to prove. But what is happening here is corruption. We may try hard to think of another name for it, but there just isn't one.

Parliamentary politics, which has stood so low in the gaze of the public, has become a collective death wish. The noble name of the legislature members is the People's Representatives. Its members, for the sake of self-importance, demand our respect. But, if they demand our veneration, they must also pay the toll of our disenchantment. A tree only dies from the top. And that tree is called "Indonesia".