As seven students, all clad in grey-and-white uniforms and two sporing acoustic guitars stepped up recently to the microphone set up in the sports field of their state high school SMAN 13 in Koja, North Jakarta, a torrential downpour came pounding down on the tent above their heads.
However, the shower only prompted whoops and cheers from the audience, which mostly consisted of their schoolmates. The group of seven then launched into a folk song about "putting honesty first" and "upholding justice", all the while encouraged by the spectators.
A few meters away from them, other students were busy signing a long, white banner as a sign of support towards combating corruption.
The words "honesty" and "combating corruption" voiced by the students seemed to reflect the public longing for undisputed truth amid the fiasco surrounding the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), which is currently viewed by many as going through a battle against the National Police.
The battle involved the suspension, as well as brief arrests, of two KPK deputies, Bibit Samad Rianto and Chandra Hamzah, by the police on the grounds of power abuse and receiving bribes from graft suspect Anggoro Widjojo.
Rumors say that the scandals are scenarios to criminalize the KPK, and these suspicions have been fueled further by recordings of phone calls made by Anggodo Widjojo, graft suspect Anggoro's brother.
SMAN 13's competition seemingly reflected the students' views on these recent events.
"We support the upholding of law and actions to eradicate corruption in all state's institutions... we grieve the slander that's happening among state institutions," said the students' written anticorruption declaration.
Retno Listyarti, a civic education (PKN) teacher, said the event was part of her subject.
"I didn't want to use conventional teaching methods, so I held a song-writing contest for the eleventh-graders who were learning about democracy, pluralism, and justice."
The students' were enthusiastic about the competition, thus she decided to hold a final competition between the winners of each seven classes.
"The students came up with the idea of combining the contest with a declaration to support the fight against corruption because the contest's momentum coincided with the KPK and police brouhaha," Retno said.
The event also saw members of the KPK and Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) acting as members of the jury. The aim to gather 1,000 signatures to fill the white banner had also been fulfilled, with 900 students and around 90 staff at the school contributing their signatures.
"We thank SMAN 13 for supporting KPK in eradicating corruption... Mostly the support we get comes from universities or NGOs, but this is amazing," the KPK's Yudi Purnomo said during the event. (dis)
