Thoughtless extravagance

Thoughtless extravagance

It may be that no financial impropriety was involved in the
incident, as presidential secretary Mujib Manan has insisted.
Nevertheless, the presidential secretariat's request that
US$300,000 be delivered by the crew of the Garuda Indonesia to
President Abdurrahman Wahid and his entourage on his recent
overseas trip to Africa and the Holy Land is certainly highly
irregular, to say the least.

The presidential secretariat's justification for requesting so
large a sum in such a peculiar manner was that speed was of the
essence. "The Saudi government only accorded state-guest status
to 35 people including the President, the First Lady, the
President's daughters, several members of the Cabinet, his guards
and two legislators traveling with the President. About 60 other
people had to pay for themselves, and therefore we sent the
money, but it did not belong to Garuda," Mujib said.

So it was the presidential secretariat's own money. The
secretariat must certainly be quite wealthy to be able to lavish
such a huge amount of money on some 60 of the huge entourage the
head of state had brought with him on his trip. A sum of $300,000
for 60 people means $5,000 for each person -- or, at the current
exchange rate, the equivalent of about Rp 50 million. It is
highly doubtful that such generosity existed even under former
president Soeharto, whose secretariat was well known for taking
good care of the people traveling with him on overseas trips.

The government, it seems, had assumed that the Saudi
government would cover all the expenses of the entire
presidential entourage, but "because the visit took place during
the peak of the haj pilgrimage season", it was prepared to pay
for only 35 members of the delegation. The lesson here is that
perhaps in the future, apart from planning presidential trips
well in advance, the presidential secretariat could allow a more
modest entourage to travel with the President. This most recent
trip, a presidential spokesman admitted, was "not well planned."

Whatever the case, this incident provides one more example of
how chaotically the finances of the presidential secretariat are
managed.

The news magazine Tempo, for example, reports that a recent
audit by the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) found the presidential
secretariat spending some Rp 309 million -- the equivalent of
US$30,000 -- on the simple job of replacing a toilet bowl and a
few water taps in a toilet at Merdeka Palace. In its report to
the House of Representatives, BPK head Satrio Budihardjo Joedono
named the State Secretariat, of which the presidential
secretariat is part, as the state institution most guilty of
aberrant practices in its routine spending.

What all this means is for the auditors and/or investigators
to determine. Nevertheless, for such extravagant and possibly
irregular spending to occur at a time when the public is
clamoring for good governance to be established certainly does
not help bolster the image of the Abdurrahman Wahid
administration.

The President has problems enough dealing with the State
Logistics agency (Bulog) and Brunei scandals, alleged
irregularities in the use of money belonging to Bulog and a gift
of $2 million received from the sultan of Brunei, which the
President said he used for relief work in Aceh.

At this point in Abdurrahman's career, the prudent thing for
his close associates and subordinates to do is to act in such a
manner as to avoid giving any impression whatsoever of financial
irregularity occurring within the President's immediate vicinity.
At this point even the slightest breath of scandal can only
damage further the President's already tarnished reputation.