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COMMENTARY: The banality of corruption: They rob billions and get away with it
The most outrageous thing about the revelation is that there has been no outrage as compared with, for example, a governor who is accused of insulting Islam.
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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)
I
t is the biggest corruption case the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has ever handled and the first hearing of the e-ID card graft case has revealed the true scale of rapaciousness with which politicians stole money from state coffers to enrich themselves.
In collusion with officials from the Home Ministry and private businessmen, the lawmakers cooked up a scheme to swindle Rp 2.5 trillion (US$440 million), KPK investigators have claimed. One politician named in the indictment allegedly accepted $5.5 million, while a former minister was alleged to get $4.5 million.
The most outrageous thing about the revelation is that there has been no outrage as compared with, for example, a governor who is accused of insulting Islam. Beyond the newspaper headlines and short-lived condemnation on social media, there has been no indication that the public is taking the mega corruption case seriously. In a country where millions of people earn less than $1 a day and where the four richest men are worth as much as the poorest 100 million, news of well-heeled politicians robbing billions from the state budget has barely struck a chord.
Such deafening silence is all the more striking with protesters in many parts of the world taking to the streets to demonstrate against corrupt government officials. In South Korea, more than 1.5 million people turned up for a protest that would end with the impeachment of president Park Geun-hye. Park was alleged to have conspired with her longtime confidante, Choi Soon-sil, to collect millions of dollars from big businesses like Samsung.
In Romania, more than half a million people, the largest gathering of protesters since the downfall of communism, showed up in early February to protest an executive order that would decriminalize government officials committing petty corruption. The government of Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu bowed to the demand and repealed the regulation.
Sadly enough, in this country, the only hot-button issue that could rile up the crowd was the allegation of blasphemy involving an ethnic Chinese, Christian governor of Jakarta.
Even for those who have grown tired of the persistent corruption, the e-ID graft case should give us reason to be outraged. E-IDs are essential for citizens to get basic administrative services, which range from attaining a driver’s license to opening a bank account. A number of media outlets have printed stories about banks rejecting applications from wouldbe customers to open an account because the bank only accepted eIDs as means of identification. You know corruption is bad when it starts to affect the lives of millions.
