Letters: Century’s probe – confused thinking

The ongoing DPR investigation into the Bank Century bailout seems to have generated a lot of confused thinking and divisive debate. Looked at objectively, however, a number of things are clear and beyond dispute.

First, given the huge amount of government funds which were used to shore up Bank Century, a DPR investigation into the circumstances surrounding the Bank Century collapse and its subsequent bailout is entirely appropriate. There must be accountability for the use of government funds. The fact that some people may want to use the DPR Investigation for their own narrow political ends does not make the idea of the DPR Investigation a bad one.

Second, for the DPR investigation to have any credibility, it must consider everyone’s role in the Bank Century bailout decision. It cannot be right, as the chairman of Golkar has been reported as suggesting that the President should be spared from being made part of the DPR investigation’s coverage.

Third, to the extent the principal actors and decision makers in the Bank Century bailout are found to be the vice president and the finance minister, the only issues for the DPR investigation would then seem to be (a) was their decision to bailout Bank Century motivated by corruption and (b) if and only if the answer to (a) is found to be “no”, was their decision so clearly wrong at the time it was made that no reasonably competent and experienced government minister would have arrived at that same decision.  

The fact that, after the event and with the wonderful benefit of hindsight, the decision to bailout out Bank Century now looks to have been a bad idea, is simply irrelevant. With hindsight, no bad decisions would ever be made. To the extent that “experts” may reasonably disagree as to whether or not the Bank Century bailout was truly necessary in order to prevent a systemic shock to the banking system as a whole, this arguably makes it very difficult to say that the decision of the vice president and the finance minister were so misconceived as to make it inappropriate for them to continue in their current positions. The standard of competence expected of Indonesian government ministers has traditionally been a comparatively modest one.

Of course, this all pre-supposes that there was no corruption involved in the decision to bailout Bank Century. Needless to say, this may well be a heroic and totally unwarranted assumption.

William A. Sullivan
Jakarta