Lack of change agents poses risk to reform: Kuntoro

Head of the Presidential Judicial Mafia Task Force Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, who is also chairman of the Presidential Work Unit for Development Monitoring and Control, talked with The Jakarta Post’s Rendi A. Witular on Tuesday over the task force’s efforts to help root out corruption in the  judiciary system. Here are the excerpts of the interview:

Question: Do you think the forming of the task force shows that the President does not fully trust the existing law enforcement agencies?

Answer: It’s not like that. The President fully trusts the agencies, but the problem is that there’s no synergy between the police, the Attorney General Office (AGO) and the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

This is what worries him most. This is where the role of the task force is needed to help streamline coordination between the agencies and increase synergy. The background to that story is the criminalization of the then KPK deputy chairmen Bibid Samad Rianto and Chandra Hamzah, and the graft cases involving junior tax official Gayus Tambunan (which dragged down several top police officers).

On a daily operational level it will be difficult for the President to closely monitor them and coordinate them without the help of the task force. Since our inception, there have been a lot of reports from the public over corruption and violations in the judiciary system.

Amid pressure from politicians who oppose the establishment of the task force, do you think the President will extend the duty of the task force when it expires at the end of the year?

That will be the sole authority of the President. I could not comment on that because it would be subjective. For sure, during our work, there has been an improvement in the judiciary system, but of course it is still far from expectations.

How do you respond to the call by politicians for the obliteration of the task force?

There are some voices that oppose to our functions but we’ve never felt oppressed by them. And we never try to reveal our success. We will let the public judge us.

For the past couple of months, the task force has not carried out any crackdown to reveal violations in the judiciary system. Is this due to pressure not to do so?

Crackdowns are not our style and are not our way of improving the system. One or two crackdowns are necessary but not all the time. What we are doing is improving the system. Our latest attempt is a joint regulation by the law enforcement agencies on justice collaboration. It is the first in our system.

The Supreme Court has even issued a circulation to all judges to have the policy carried out. The policy will enable law enforcers to pull in the big fishes and the masterminds of corruption cases.

Justice collaborators are the people who are involved in corruption cases. They will receive lenient
punishments in exchange for testifying against the masterminds of cases. As we all know, all corruptors that we’ve caught have been only small fishes.

Our first effort for institutional reform is always through the leader of the institution. We urge them to change and monitor the reform progress.

The second effort is through the issue of a Presidential Instruction that consists of several working plans that should carried out under our supervision.

How far are they willing to comply with the instruction?

They do comply. But we cannot expect drastic changes. We’re dealing with institutions with long histories and traditions of corruption as reflected in their mind-sets, attitudes and structures. If they refuse to comply, we recommend that the President pressures them.

But again it’s not an easy task. Officials and officers whom we’ve netted during our crackdowns could easily escape from their misconduct unless we reminded their leaders over and over again to have them punished. If there’s no pressure from us, the leaders were usually reluctant to take stern measures. There are many reasons for them to be reluctant to hand down the punishments.

This is because of the strong esprit de corps formed since they were in the academy. But eventually, there has been some improvement.

Frankly speaking, we’re living in an anomaly situation. We have all these rules and live in an orderly way, but all of the rules could be transacted by certain vested interests.

To what extend is the anomaly?

Well are trying to untangle the web now. There’s some progress, but it may take a very long time. Three years ago, there were 12,000 local bylaws that were against those of the central government.

Now the amount has declined to 5,000. Our task is to settle all of these bylaws one by one. I just cannot define the situation that we are now in regarding these problems. Another example is if there’s a dispute over land, which law prevails?

The law on mining or forestry? These two laws confront each other. What happens is that many disputed companies or people bribe their way to win the case. I often wonder whether the two laws were intentionally made for the law enforcers to abuse them and make money out of the mess.

So what’s the most daunting obstacle to rooting out corruption in the judiciary system next year?

The main obstacle for reform is the lack of new people who have the capability to bring change. We don’t have many agents of change. We’ve all basically been raised under the New Order regime.

There are people who during that time could not push for institutional changes but now they’re able to do that. Everything that was by nature corrupt during the time was considered legal.

It has become so deep rooted that it’ll take huge efforts and time to push for the change. We can
actually produce a lot of agents of change but they should have the capacity, idealism and the chance
to deliver their ideals for institutional reform.