Whistle-blowers serve a purpose

By B. Rahardjo Sidharta

QUEZON CITY, Philippines (JP): In a country with a paternalistic culture like Indonesia, an intellectual is considered a "good" leader, viewed as not only an expert in his or her own field, but also imbued with high morality.

A "good" intellectual will always put higher priority on people's interests than personal ones despite the great risks which may be entailed.

Through intellectual capacity, the person has to be able to make judgments beneficial to society.

By definition, intellectuals are people whose works, activities, behavior and way of thinking are based on "scientific" judgments gained either from experience, observation or experimentation.

Inevitably, an intellectual will always be influenced by the surrounding society. An intellectual's activities will intermingle, directly or indirectly, with the society. The interactions can be either favorable or depriving to both the intellectual and the society.

An intellectual with relatively more and better knowledge, experience and observations than the common people is expected by society to inform, teach and help the people in order for them to be able to attain better life.

Meanwhile, a kind, risk-taking intellectual is known as a whistle-blower.

Rosemary Chalk in a 1980 work defined whistle-blowers as "employees who speak about wrongdoing by their bosses". In this case, the term is applied to intellectuals who work in companies, industries, offices, etc., whose products and/or services are closely related to society. It is not unusual if some of them reveal the "truth" about what they are dealing with.

These intellectuals are brave enough to speak about fraud, criminal activities, illegal actions, capricious decisions, potential risks, hazards to public safety or mismanagement, that are done or caused by their institutions.

By doing so, they consciously take a great risk that they may well lose their jobs.

There are also "fake" whistle-blowers who do the same thing for their own benefit or personal interests. The latter intellectuals are better called traitors.

Whistle-blowing intellectuals are really needed by society, not only because of the belief that intellectuals should be able to serve society, but also because they are ethically responsible for the application of their knowledge in society.

In other words, the conduct above is often labeled as "intellectual vocation". It is a potential bulwark not only for individual but also for universal freedom, that is the essential principle of civil rights.

Self-governed society or civil society will always provide great opportunities to their intellectuals and all people to practice their freedom to speak and express their ideas. It is this which provides them with the right to ask the government for responsibility for everything happening in society.

In an authoritarian-militaristic government, this will never happen.

A whistle-blower, to some extent, can be considered an intellectual who resists totalitarian regimes. History repeats itself. During World War II in Germany, atomic scientist Werner Heisenberg and his coworkers sabotaged the war by passive resistance and delayed the atom bomb project. Soon after the war ended, an Austrian atomic scientist commented: "It was perfectly clear to many of the best scientists, such as Hahn and Laue, that it would be a crime against mankind to give into hands of that psychopath Hitler such a dangerous weapon as the atom bomb".

By doing so, Heisenberg and others were charged with having committed treason. The same thing happened to Russian physicist Andrey Sakharov, who spent almost all of his lifetime in prison under the Soviet regime. He was the famous intellectual in the country who was outspoken about the "truth" to the people, which was, of course, offensive to the government and the party. Like Sakharov, whistle-blowing intellectuals are called on to reveal the "truth" based on universal moral and ethical values that cannot be circumvented by particular nations and states.

Recently, Jeffrey Winters, a Indonesianist from the United States, in the middle of the reform movement in Indonesia, stated there might be corrupt practices in the signing of a contract between the Indonesian government through the Ministry of Mines and Energy and the local subsidiary of Freeport McMoran Inc. of the United States.

His allegation eventually led to condemnation from several ministers, especially the justice minister and the attorney general, of Winters. As a foreign intellectual, Winters was astonished because such treatment would never happen in his home country. On the contrary, government officers in his homeland would immediately take necessary measures to verify the truth of such a statement.

Unfortunately, similar treatment is meted out to "local" whistle-blowing intellectuals such as George Aditjondro, who has actively gathered data about the practices of corruption, collusion and nepotism done by former president Soeharto, his family members and his cronies. The same fate has befallen businessman Arifin Panigoro, who reported such a practice in some government offices. Again, instead of searching for evidence of to prove or disprove his claims, the government responded by accusing Panigoro himself of committing corruption in his Medco group of companies.

It seems that in the reform era, whistle-blowing intellectuals who speak up about the wrongdoings of government officers are dissuaded from doing so. If they persist in their efforts, they will even face charges as traitors, meaning they can be sued in court. In this very moment of reform, whistle-blowing intellectuals are considered tantamount to plain criminals.

It is a situation faced by most "good" whistle-blowing intellectuals in the country. Only the tough one can resist. In order to encourage more intellectuals to become whistle-blowers, the society must give them support, assurance and "protection". Through a just and honest judicial system alone, a whistle- blowing intellectual is eager to reveal the wrongdoings of government officers to society. Hence, there must be cooperation between society and "good" intellectuals in building a clean and transparent government.

Without such cooperation, both society and the whistle-blowing intellectuals will never experience democratic life in the country. The most probable consequence of such a situation is that pro-status quo government officers and their followers will enjoy the moment to bolster their positions.

The writer is a graduate of the University of the Philippines.