R

ahmat Sutopo sat peacefully outside the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) offices in South Jakarta on Thursday, reading a book and every now and then chatting with his peers sitting nearby.

It might seem like tame behavior for a student, but Rahmat was there in protest.

He was one of 10 students carrying out a hunger strike, demanding a swift investigation into the Bank Century scandal, in which several top officials are allegedly implicated.

Joining Rahmat, a law student from the State University of Semarang, were students from Salatiga's Satya Wacana Christian University, Central Java; Ronggolawe University of Tuban and the Sunan Ampel State Islamic Institute of Surabaya, both in East Java; and Jakarta State Islamic University and Bung Karno University, both in Jakarta.

"We will be doing this hunger strike until clear action is taken," Rahmat said. "If no action is taken, we will return to our campuses and ask our fellow students to join us in a mass movement."

This hunger strike, he added, could well turn into a mass movement if the government did not show itself to be serious about eradicating corruption.

But he's not just a student talking big - others share that view. One of them is anticorruption campaigner Eryanto Nugroho, who said the government should take serious and swift action in stamping out corruption.

If not, he warned, public frustrations will rise and mass demonstrations are likely to result.

"President SBY *Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono* should remember that he got re-elected because he had shown a commitment to corruption eradication," said Ery whose group "Cicak" plans to persevere with its nationwide anticorruption campaign.

The student and civil movements have been in the forefront in the past week, as public pressure continues to grow for state institutions to move forward with their anticorruption drive.

And this time, the movement is going beyond those on the streets and right into people's homes, as citizens joined in the anticorruption drive via the Internet, logging on in force to throw their support behind the KPK, which many fear is in danger of losing its power.

The arrest of the suspended deputy KPK chairmen Bibit Samad Rianto and Chandra M. Hamzah by the National Police on Oct. 29 has been viewed as an attempt to weaken the anticorruption body, which has claimed big names in the past couple of years.

The police charged Bibit and Chandra with abuse of power, alleging they had both received bribes. This didn't wash with the public, with people claiming in response that the police were trying to frame them in a bid to disrupt the KPK investigation into the involvement of high-ranking officials in the Century scandal.

And that was where the swell of public involvement began. Following the arrest, various civil movements rallied in support of the KPK, and ordinary citizens, armed with nothing more than a computer and an Internet connection, showed their solidarity by joining online causes in support of the KPK, which they say is the last resort in the country's struggle against systemic corruption.

Facebook members could join a group called "Gerakan 1,000,000 Facebookers Dukung Chandra Hamzah & Bibit Samad Rianto" (The movement to gather 1,000,000 Facebook users to support Chandra Hamzah and Bibit Samad Rianto); by Saturday morning, the group had achieved its goal, with more than 1 million supporters.

Twitter, the micro blogging site, is also being used for updates on the latest news about the KPK and developments in the corruption fight.

What this phenomenon shows is that support for the KPK is coming not only from the expected parties - students and activists - but also from professionals who might otherwise have stayed out of it, but who have become involved via social networking websites.

One of these is Franka, a fashion stylist, who said she fully backed the KPK in joining the cause on Facebook. She also wore a black ribbon to show her sympathy for the commission.

As public pressure swelled, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono set up a fact-finding team assigned to review the case against Bibit and Chandra as well as other graft cases involving high-ranking officials.

The National Police released Bibit and Chandra on Nov. 3, just hours after the Constitutional Court heard recordings of wiretapped conversations made by the KPK, which had taped the conversations as part of its investigation. Named in the recordings were some law enforcers who are believed to be key players in a corruption saga.

But their release and the establishment of the fact-finding team has not yet calmed the public, with people still closely monitoring further developments to ensure proper actions are taken.

And it's possible that if people are not satisfied with the government's handling of the Bank Century scandal and the KPK/police case, public pressure could continue to grow, suggests Bachtiar Effendy, political analyst from the Jakarta State Islamic University.

Bachtiar said the case had the potential to grow into a huge public movement, depending on how the government handled this situation. He implied that the mood could change quickly if the government failed to respond adequately to public demands.

"This is not the first corruption case that has involved top level of-ficers. There have been similar *corruption* cases like *former senior prosecutor* Urip Tri Gunawan and *former National Police chief of detectives* Suyitno Landung," he said. "How could this happen again?"

As for whether the growing public dissatisfaction could swell into a mass movement similar to the 1998 rally, Bachtiar pointed out that this situation is new.

"The trigger is different," he said. "The 1998 movement was first sparked by an economic crisis before it turned into a political issue, while this corruption issue is about the KPK and the police. So, the trigger of this corruption case is *smaller' than the previous one."