The House's last act

Only one day after making the appalling decision to approve the controversial state security bill, the outgoing House of Representatives commendably recommended the government take legal action against all senior officials and businesspeople implicated in the Bank Bali scandal. The recommendations, made on the basis of the findings of a special House investigative team, called on the government to legally resolve the scandal within one month or risk facing the wrath of the people.

If implemented, the recommendations would help unravel the fraud, noncompliance, irregularities, misappropriations, undue preferential treatment, concealment, bribery and corruption which independent auditor PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) claimed to have uncovered in its audit of the transactions related to the scandal.

Though most likely to fall on deaf ears, the House's suggestions will at least help sustain the wave of public pressure for a thorough and transparent resolution of what is now known as Baligate. The House's action also served to tell the world that the Indonesian nation by no means condones corruption.

In the face of the virtual inertia on the part of the National Police and the Attorney General's Office in handling the multimillion dollar case, public pressure, including from international creditors such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, appear to be the only means available now to force law enforcement agencies to thoroughly, properly and transparently handle the case.

The inertia contrasts with the firm and quick manners in which the police always deal with government critics. The police did not waste any time in announcing on Friday that former minister of mines and energy Soebroto was suspected of masterminding the student protests simply on account of a meeting he reportedly attended on Thursday at the Sahid Jaya Hotel.

Look at how the National Police have attempted to reduce the scope of the scandal to banking crimes, while the audit by PwC revealed high-level collusion to pillage state coffers which mandates the imposition of the anti-corruption law. No wonder none of the senior officials implicated in the scandal are included among the 10 suspects whose dossiers have been sent to the Jakarta Prosecutor's Office.

Also note how the Supreme Audit Agency, whose chairman Satrio Billy B. Judono happens to be an associate of President B.J. Habibie, unashamedly resorted to the old trick of invoking the banking secrecy law to deny the House, Bank Indonesia and the Ministry of Finance access to the full report of the Pwc audit on the Baligate.

No less flabbergasting was the conclusion by the National Police, the only institution besides the Supreme Audit Agency and the attorney general that obtained the full audit results, that the 400-page PwC report prepared by an international team of 20 multidisciplinary experts was illogical.

Habibie should have realized that however the scandal would be handled, the whole process would lack credibility if he steadfastly refused to allow the public disclosure of the audit report. The public, both here and abroad, clearly place more trust in PwC than Habibie, who has failed to win confidence in his ability to handle high-level cases of corruption.

Denying the House, the finance ministry and Bank Indonesia access to the report also wastes the opportunity to draw lessons from the scandal. The audit report contains analyses, conclusions and recommendations on ways to prevent similar recurrences, which would have proved enlightening to these institutions. PwC warned the government that its audit found the government guarantee on bank deposits and claims and the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency, which at present controls almost Rp 600 trillion in assets from closed and taken-over banks, were highly prone to fraud.

Following the House's recommendations, allowing the public disclosure of the PricewaterhouseCoopers audit report and prosecuting all those implicated in the scandal are prerequisites to placing the economy on the path to sustainable recovery.

Anything short of taking these actions will make the entire government, including Bank Indonesia, a suspect in a high-level cover-up, destroying whatever little trust the international community, most notably creditors, still has in it.