President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono set a new precedent when he delivered a televised speech on the eve of the International Anti-Corruption Day on Dec. 8, with political heat emanating from his accusation that the nationwide rallies planned for the next day were meant to topple him.
Contrary to public expectations, in his speech Yudhoyono turned sympathetic to the popular anticorruption movement. Smiling, the President called on people to take part in the rallies, provided they went about it peacefully.
Looking at what he has done personally and what his administration has actually been doing over the year, his statement sounded hollow and unconvincing to even the least skeptical.
The past year has seen intense and systematic attempts by allegedly corrupt powerful people, in both the executive and legislative branches of bureaucracy, to sabotage the anticorruption effort by way of weakening the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).
First, lawmakers at the House of Representatives, who have seen many legislators off to jail for graft, attempted to strip the KPK of its key powers, such as lawful wiretapping and running its own Corruption Court.
Thanks to strong public resistance, the lawmakers’ ill intention was foiled, but the new corruption law entitles regular district courts to more power in trying graft cases and career judges will dominate the KPK’s Corruption Court, uncomfortably reversing the current composition.
Even though public pressure, again, managed to have Bibit Samad Rianto and Chandra M. Hamzah reinstated, the terror effect of their ordeal and the possible deals for their case’s out-of-court settlement are feared to undermine the KPK’s courage to do its job properly in the future.
Its current handling of the Rp 6.76 trillion Bank Century scandal involving such high-level officials as Vice President Boediono and Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati will be its first major test case after the “war” with police and the AGO.
More than anything, the Bibit-Chandra incrimination has undoubtedly further strained relations among law enforcers.
It may take compromises to reconcile them — at the cost of public interest. The attempt to frame the KPK deputies also added credence to public perceptions that the National Police and the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) are corrupt institutions that do not want to see the KPK grow so strong that it may invade their comfort zone one day.
The bad news is that public distrust in the police and the judiciary has only been growing after the Bibit-Chandra episode.
Meanwhile, the public is hanging hopes on KPK, which has been practically lame most of this year after its chairman, Antasari Azhar, was detained on murder charges, and with the incrimina-lization of Bibit and Chandra.
And the attempts to weaken the KPK continue. After the various initial tricks failed, the government is now playing with the idea of issuing a regulation that will give the authority of lawful interception to the Information and Communications Ministry.
Any state institutions, including the KPK, will have to obtain the ministry’s endorsement and court permission to bug conversations between those allegedly plotting crimes. Currently, the authority is legally vested in the KPK, the police and the State Intelligence Agency (BIN).
Information and Communications Minister Tifatul Sembiring argues that the government regulation, due in six months, is urgently needed.
A senior figure of the Islamic-based Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), Tifatul, is among government bureaucrats who openly criticized the Constitutional Court’s permission on Nov. 3 to make public the KPK’s recordings of conversations to frame Bibit and Chandra.
“You know what the result has been?” Tifatul asked The Jakarta Post. “People’s trust in the police and judicial system has declined.”
It’s time President Yudhoyono and his aides stop their rhetoric and start real action to root-out corruption. Until then, corruption eradication is doomed to fail to the delight of thieves infesting the bureaucracy at all levels.
The President should be as proud when claiming successes in the anticorruption campaign as when it comes to empowering the KPK, which has given him his good international reputation.
The author is a staff writer at The Jakarta Post.
