Transformation of corruption

This is the first of two articles on corruption by Teten Masduki, coordinator of the Jakarta-based Indonesian Corruption Watch.

JAKARTA (JP): The great expectation that graft would be reduced drastically under the administration of President Abdurrahman Wahid has, for the most part, been dashed.

Over the past year, the administration reportedly has handed out positions in exchange for money, a practice that is being done more and more out in the open.

This has been something of a surprise, and shows that a stronger House of Representatives, a more liberalized press and intense political rivalries have not reduced the abuse of power.

A system of checks and balances has yet to be realized in the absence of a balance in the relationship between the state, the private sector and civil society.

Corruption basically preserves the system, patterns and methods inherited from the New Order regime. Graft in the bureaucracy has continued on virtually undisturbed, no surprise considering close to 100 percent of the bureaucracy is still in the hands of members of the former regime.

Under former president B.J. Habibie, the government refused to pursue a house-cleaning policy to rid the bureaucracy, state- owned enterprises, the police and prosecutors' offices of corrupt officials from the old regime.

Similarly, the current administration has not considered restructuring the bureaucracy, monitoring legal institutions to cut to a minimum opportunities for graft or guaranteeing that perpetrators of corruption will be tried.

There are slight changes: In the New Order era, graft was concentrated in the palace, where control was exercised to divide the areas and define the borders of graft.

Huge projects had to go to the palace families. A "Buloggate" would have never surfaced because such forms of alleged corruption could always be legalized through presidential or ministerial decrees or laws.

All this could be arranged thanks to the perfect "kleptocracy" of the New Order and its huge machine of authority. Political and economic power was in the hands of the president, while the legislative and the judicial institutions were subordinated to the executive institution or the government.

Worse, the press was helpless. The New Order's kleptocracy was robust, thanks in turn to the support of the military and business tycoons.

President Abdurrahman Wahid enjoys less political and economic power than Soeharto; the center of power has even shifted to the House of Representatives.

Under regional autonomy, part of the power of the central government is distributed to regional administrations. So the center of graft is shifting from the palace to political parties, the House and the regions.

In other words, graft is undergoing a transformation from an oligarchic form to a multiparty format.

Most rival political forces have imitated the mobilization of funds practiced by the New Order in pursuing its political goals. Most of the new forces are still unable to establish an adequate source of funds from their members, because most of these parties have been set up by the elite.

Strategic and "money-generating" positions in the bureaucracy and state-owned enterprises have become a bone of contention for the political elite in a bid to control state and private economic sources ahead of the next general election.

With the economy becoming worse, these political forces have no other option but to foster patron-client relationships with businesspeople, bureaucrats, politicians, underworld figures -- in short, the old forces groomed by the New Order.

In the past, business magnates, directors of state-owned enterprises and political bureaucrats would simply have to foster this patron-client relationship with the palace or with Golkar to keep their interests safe.

Today, however, they must give away money to more parties. The political distribution resulting from the last general election does not guarantee that one particular political force can be made a long-term patron. Therefore, the cost of graft may have increased.

Nevertheless, not all graft cases at the level of the political elite is directly linked with the need to mobilize funds for political parties. The most extreme cases of money politics are to be found in the election of a number of regional heads, but these are more individually motivated.

Political choices made by legislators are often not in line with the policies pursued by their parties. The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan), for example, has dismissed several of its members for their involvement in money politics.

Regarding the first family, so far we do not know for sure whether allegations of corruption, collusion and nepotism (KKN) involving close relatives of the President are true. When Soeharto was in power, KKN was easier to track because they were made more obvious through the formulation of policies for their business interests.

Graft today is closely linked with the political structure and the accountability of the institutions of democracy now being fostered. At the lower levels, corruption is indeed attributable to factors like low salaries and vast opportunities for graft given the long chain of bureaucracy, but all this is a mere downward projection of graft at higher levels.

When a fish rots, it begins from the head, doesn't it?

As long as the political, bureaucratic, legal and economic structures are dominated by old forces, it is next to impossible to eliminate graft.