TheJakartaPost
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EDITORIAL: Follow the money
Since the term of former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono from 2004 to 2014, the House has several times drafted amendments to the 2002 KPK Law, aiming to paralyze the antigraft body.
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The e-ID card scandal constitutes robbery en masse from the state budget by people entrusted to manage taxpayers’ money. (Shutterstock/File)
N
ew momentum to place the country’s corrupt political party system in purgatory awaits the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) — as dozens of politicians from various parties have been named in the indictment of two former Home Ministry officials standing trial for allegedly accepting bribes in the procurement of e-ID cards nationwide.
The KPK has no choice but to seize the opportunity, although it could lead the commission to another episode of living dangerously, marked by political parties joining hands at the House of Representatives to realize long-held plans to revise the KPK Law to their benefit.
Since the term of former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono from 2004 to 2014, the House has several times drafted amendments to the 2002 KPK Law, aiming to paralyze the antigraft body. Both Yudhoyono and his successor President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo have repeatedly rejected the political exercise, forcing parties from both the ruling coalition and opposition to shelve their draft revisions.
Whether Jokowi can withstand the pressure this time around, as his Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) will join the call for an amendment, remains to be seen.
The draft amendment stipulates that KPK investigators can conduct eavesdropping only after obtaining solid evidence and upon the consent of one of several oversight bodies, including the House. The KPK will also be allowed to halt investigations.
The two key articles, if passed, will reduce the KPK to an ordinary law enforcement agency, while the spirit of anticorruption that gave birth to the KPK treated graft as an extraordinary crime that required extraordinary countermeasures, including wiretapping discretion.
As a result of its phone bugging authority, the KPK has managed to catch high-ranking and respected officials and their partners in crime, a luxury that eludes ordinary law enforcers like the police and Attorney General’s Office.
