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.