G

raft cases will continue to rise and public officials will continue to be caught in corruption scandals because no regions nationwide are committed to implementing President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Corruption Elimination Action Plan, says the Malang Corruption Watchdog (MCW).

A series of surveys conducted by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and the Transparency International Indonesia (TII) placed several cities in the province in the most corrupt category according to public perception.

According to the recent survey by TII, Surabaya was the most corrupt city out of 50 cities nationwide. Malang, Madiun and Jember were also included on the list of most corrupt cities.

And according to the recent KPK survey, Malang and Sumenep were the two cities with the lowest levels of public sector integrity in 2008.

A six-month survey conducted by MCW between July and December 2008 showed that not only regional heads and chief councilors abused their power and were embroiled in fund embezzlement cases, but so too were portfolio heads, causing Rp 1.3 trillion in losses to the state.

On Tuesday, MSW Foundation chairman Luthfi J. Kurniawan told The Jakarta Post that regions declined to implement the anticorruption action plan launched by the President in 2004 for three main reasons.

"Most regional heads believe the action plan will trap their governments because the plan is preventative in nature," he said.

"For instance, the action plan prevents conspiracy between regional administrations and their councilors when designing their budgets."

Secondly, the central and regional governments have different ways of running their administrations, including different tactics to ridding their administrations of corruption, Luthfi said.

Finally, he said, the bureaucracy does not run smoothly due to differences between the parties running the central government and the ones ruling the regional administrations.

The anticorruption action plan minimizes public officials' ability to abuse their power, Luthfi said, adding it would only be effective if it was implemented by regional administrations.

Malang Mayor Peni Suparto has not yet addressed corruption as indicated by the KPK survey, saying he did not know anything about the survey.

"We will follow up the survey's result positively and make evaluation with my subordinates," he said.

Luthfi said the war on corruption should involve civil society: the media, universities and anticorruption NGOs.