The DPR whistle-blowers

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".