M

embers of the House of Representatives have questioned the credibility of the candidates nominated by the government to fill the nine commissioner positions at the Financial Services Authority (OJK).

The legislators made the judgment after receiving reports from the National Intelligence Agency (BIN).

Harry Azhar Azis, the deputy chairman of the House’s Commission XI on banking and finance, said that BIN reported that some of the candidates had allegedly been involved in suspicious transactions in the past while the integrity of others had also been questioned.

“Some of them have been under the investigation of the Corruption Eradication Commission [KPK] or with the Attorney General’s Office [AGO]. Other candidates also have scandals, such as affairs with numerous women,” Harry told The Jakarta Post by phone.

Harry said that based on the report from BIN, there were candidates who abused their power for financial benefit. Other candidates had been open with their financial track records because, according to Harry, not all of them had listed their assets on their wealth disclosure forms (LHKPN).

“Their failure to update their LHKPN list suggests dishonesty,” Harry said. Harry refused to reveal any of the names of the suspicious candidates because such information was confidential.

“The information we obtained will be used by each faction as a consideration when we conduct our fit and proper test,” he said. “What matters is that we are only going to select the best people to fill the OJK commissioner posts,” he added.

Fit and proper tests will take place from June 7 to June 14 and the House will officially announce the results on June 19.

Responding to Harry’s statement, Finance Minister Agus Martowardojo, who headed the OJK selection committee, said that he and his colleagues had chosen the best candidates to be filtered by the House.

“All of the candidates that the committee proposed had integrity and are ready to become OJK commissioners,” Agus said.

Agus said that the committee had also traced all of the candidates’ past track records and found no significant issues that needed to be addressed.

Commission XI legislator Tossy Aryanto from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) said that personal issues, such as affairs, would not be used as a basis for legislators to filter OJK candidates.

“Personal life is a matter of privacy. What we are going to test is their competency for the OJK job,” he said.

The OJK will become a financial service monitoring super body. This institution will take all financial monitoring authority from Bank Indonesia and the Capital Market and Financial Services Supervisory Agency (Bapepam-LK).

As many as 14 candidates have survived a series of selection processes and are now about to enter a fit and proper test to be conducted by the House. This will be the final selection process in which two candidates will compete for a commissioner post.

The OJK has nine commissioner posts, but the other two automatically belong to representatives from Bank Indonesia and the Finance Ministry.

According to the OJK Law, the House has 45 days to conduct the fit and proper test on the candidates after their names have been submitted by the President. Practically, however, legislators will have less than 30 days to complete the test because they will enter a recess period from April 13 to May 13.

The chosen commissioners will hold massive authority because the OJK will not only be responsible for monitoring financial industries but also to issue and to annul regulations. Watchdogs and experts have therefore been hoping for people with the greatest integrity to fill the commissioner posts.