Your letters: The graft fighting

Paper Edition | Page: 8

The fight against corruption entails seven parts, according to Bertrand de Speville.

Political will must be evinced from the top to fight corruption. Anti-corruption values should be clearly set out in law, e.g., bribery is sinful and morally wrong.

We need to have a strategy to fight corruption and those who violate these values should be investigated, persecuted, convicted and crucified.

The system should be checked out one by one in order to eliminate opportunities for corruption

In implementing this strategy, education is a must. Public support is important. Resources are of utmost importance, meaning the KPK (Corruption Eradication Commission) must have sufficient people and enough money to be effective.

Endurance is important because tackling corruption takes a long time. Endurance has two components: time and pain. The community, leaders and legislators should realize that an effective fight against corruption is painful.

Speville stated that the resources of KPK are inadequate because 752 employees for 240 million people is not enough at all and the commission needs at least 8,000 people and that at least 80 percent of those working for the KPK should be investigators in order to be really effective.

Moreover, he reiterates that the KPK is being discriminative when investigating corruption cases. The KPK should therefore investigate every allegation of corruption and should not have double standards. He also stated that the KPK should have a certain degree of independence and needs to have operational autonomy.

The above interview boils down to the fact that members of the House should not tell the KPK to use double standards and that each case however small, should be thoroughly investigated.

There must be political will at the top. But how is this possible, as the politicians at the top are the ones who are utterly corrupt?

Moral values are totally lacking. Top politicians and those in power think that they have a right to steal from the people. Bribery is rife in this country and the current system is full of holes enabling those in power to steal.

This is the only point that the country has. The country has enough resources but they rather spent it on useless projects such as the Hambalang case to enable them to steal.  

Time is the only point that the country has. Judging from the above, there is still a lot to be done to make the fight against corruption effective. Indeed, we should never give up hope.

The KPK is doing whatever it can with limited resources, and even less people.

Lynna
Bogor, West Java