Onward antigraft soldiers -- but to where?

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Fri, 10/20/2006 10:40 AM  |  Opinion

Ati Nurbaiti, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

This is the seventh in a series of articles The Jakarta Post is publishing to mark President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's second anniversary in office on Oct. 20.

Blessed is the day when from sunset to sunrise there is not a single instance of corruption here.

But would we recognize Indonesia? For red-light runners would be threatened with jail if they sheepishly slipped a Rp 50,000 (US$6) note to pak polisi, investigators would not heartily accept ""thank-you notes"" in the form of travelers checks or cars, and all where you cannot qualify for the big road project just because you are the cousin of the official's wife.

Challenging this familiarity with corruption and the limited perception that anything is remotely wrong with such conduct cannot be the responsibility of the President alone. But why the shrug when it comes to the antigraft drive?

In his election campaign, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono declared fighting corruption was a priority and he was ready to lead his men into battle.

And we saw the establishment and strengthening of institutions like the Corruption Eradication Commission, the Anticorruption Court and the Financial Transactions Report Analysis Center, and many more high-profile figures were brought to trial.

Only it has not been all ""shock and awe""; as once the awe was over the shock effect, if any was intended, was strangely absent.

It should be -- for the first time an active three-star police general has been sentenced, if only to 18 months' jail, for accepting gifts in the course of a bank investigation.

Under Yudhoyono, we've seen the sentencing of a former minister, a governor and hundreds of provincial councillors of all political leanings and a number of district heads.

This must be noted as progress in an otherwise hopeless picture. Now at least there is a feeling that everybody had better watch out -- but unfortunately that is about it. Where is the turnaround of attitude or even the slight change in the habitual breathing of the graft culture -- the high value on creativity and hard work in pulling together all available resources to access ways and means to anything you need, disregarding what must be totally useless rules?

And are we anywhere close, for instance, to eradicating false invoices and fictitious receiving reports for contractors; or to smoothing the processing of building and work permits, without having to respond to the body language of the unnecessarily rude and self-important men and women in brown, to determine whether our papers wind up on the top or the bottom of the pile?

There is no such turnaround; this seems to be more of a trickle-down effect.

For the message of the antigraft drive has only been: Tread more carefully in following accepted business practices, maintain good relations, grease the wheels and leave no traces.

In short, watch out or you will be caught -- or be sloppy and clueless in a world where everyone else understands each other perfectly and you are asking to be arrested. The wrong message, perhaps, but an inevitable one without the deterrent effects of a hard-hitting campaign against an entrenched habit.

A huge percentage of the state budget is still used to pay debts, the result of mismanagement bordering on abuse of power, while that sum could be much better spent on making life a little easier for the country's poorest people who number some 40 million.

The second year of SBY's graft campaign is underway -- with arrests and convictions, along with so many suspended sentences that it is getting harder to remain impressed and hopeful.

We are far from noosing Big Corruption League members; instead there has been a growing resistance. There are requests to review the law on the authorities of the Corruption Eradication Commission filed by former and current members of the General Elections Commission, following the jailing of executives like Mulyana W. Kusumah, a newcomer to the country's bureaucracy and thus seen as being among the ""unfortunate"".

Most recently we read of legislators' efforts to stop the prosecution of councillors. Their grounds -- that civil law trials are more appropriate for lawmakers charged with abusing the state budget process -- sounds like a desperate and cowardly attempt to save their own hides.

The hardest of these antigraft game plans to swallow has been the voices of what can only be construed as blackmail. High-ranking officials are complaining about the slow spending of the state budget, in part because everyone is being too cautious.

But admissions that no one is willing to be project officer or become the one in charge of procurement across government departments, for instance, come across as ""do it my way or don't"" rather than a desire to turn a new leaf.

A bit like the military whining, ""we couldn't prevent the riot and killings because we would be accused of violating human rights"" -- forgive us ordinary folk for thinking any armed personnel should not be armed if he is too dumb to tell the difference.

We see here the danger of SBY's antigraft campaign being drowned out by this resistance and blackmail -- menacing to render hollow a supposedly democratic structure with a people deprived of their ability to check such abuse of power, to ensure that no one pinches someone else's entitlement.

It's the failure to focus on a few big shots, as many have suggested, that is preventing an effective antigraft drive; hence stuck we are at the top of the Transparency International perception index on corruption.

No one said it would be easy and those standing on either side of the front line of the graft drive might think public expectations have been too high.

But neither had anyone's role model been the squeaky clean bureaucracies of advanced democracies. All around us were the up-front images of neighboring countries in their fight against graft; the immediate freezing of the assets and bank accounts of former president Ferdinand Marcos; the trial of former presidents in South Korea -- all a stark contrast to our round-about hapless rhetoric against suspects, while eventually they humbly go their private ways with their private, considerably intact, property.

In spite of noble intentions and encouraging landmarks, the resulting message of the war against graft has been far from ""thou shalt not steal"".

Who's stealing? -- we hear -- ""I didn't ask for it, and I spread it for the greater good.

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