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oubt has been cast over the Yudhoyono administration’s commitment to corruption eradication, as evidenced in the government-sponsored antigraft bill, which potentially weakens the fight against corruption itself.

Some even speculate a systemic move to sabotage the anticorruption campaign is in action as the House of Representatives pushes to revise the 2003 Law on the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), which many perceive will instead eradicate the graft busters.

Simply put, our hope of establishing a clean government, one of the raisons d’etre for the reform movement in 1998, may now be facing its toughest test ever as both the executive and legislative powers are joining forces to shatter the dream. Whether it is the work of transactional politics following the aborted plan to launch a House inquiry into the tax corruption saga and the KPK arrest of 24 politicians related to bribery in the election of the Bank Indonesia senior deputy governor in 2004, only time will tell.

But such suspicion has strong grounds. For the political elites, both in the executive and the House, the KPK has long emerged as a force that goes beyond their control. KPK leaders are jointly selected by the government and the House and therefore are politically indebted to the elites. But, as is the case of the current KPK leadership, the anticorruption drive it has launched rejects compromises.

The KPK had its wings practically clipped when three of its five leaders were embroiled in legal cases in 2009, and with only one year left before their terms end in 2012 can they regain their feet and consolidate?

The House politicians, at least some of them, play a part in the apparent move to undermine the antigraft body with their consistent refusal to accept KPK deputy chiefs Bibit Samad Rianto and Chandra M. Hamzah, despite the fact that the Attorney General’s Office has stopped an investigation into alleged bribery and extortion implicating them.

Now, through their initiative amendment of the KPK law, the politicians insist on reducing the corruption busters to an ordinary law enforcement agency. The bill says the KPK can drop investigations into graft cases for the sake of the presumption of innocence principle. This contradicts the current rule of the game that the KPK has upheld since its inception in 2004 that prohibits it from giving up investigations.

The point of no return code has forced the KPK to launch investigations only if evidence is solid and it can effectively bring to justice many corrupt officials. There have been cases that showed the state prosecutors’ or the police’s discretion in halting graft investigations leaves them prone to bribery or political compromises, therefore giving judiciary mafia broad room to play.

More devastating is the proposed amendment to the 2001 Anticorruption Law, which scraps the death penalty and reduces the minimum sentence to only one year. Another revision says that those convicted of embezzling less than Rp 25 million (US$28,000) in state funds can escape prosecution if they simply return the money.

If passed, the new Anticorruption Law will lose its deterrence effect and therefore prove that the current administration’s talk referring to corruption as an extraordinary crime is mere rhetoric to woo voters or build a good image.

With a powerful KPK in charge, Indonesia remains far from winning its war on corruption. With a weakened antigraft body, we certainly lose the battle.

Civil society in the country needs to stretch to the limits to speak out and act against the two bills that are feared to bring our anticorruption drive back to the previous dark age.