T

he fights against corruption and terror are two major battles Indonesia has yet to win and both continue to threaten the nation, or at least slow efforts to ensure security and welfare for all, as a series of events this week might suggest.

A man detonated explosives strapped to his body in the compound of the police headquarters in the restive Central Sulawesi regency of Poso on Monday; reminiscent of a bombing inside a mosque at Cirebon Police headquarters two years ago. The incident in Poso was the first suicide attack committed outside Java and Bali. It immediately sent shockwaves across the country, prompting regional police to tighten security measures.

Irfan Idris, director of deradicalization at the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT), said retaliation to the police'€™s crackdown on terror networks was behind the suicide bombing. In a simultaneous, rapid operation last month, the National Police'€™s Densus 88 counterterrorism unit captured 16 terror suspects across Java and Lampung and killed seven others for resisting arrest.

Indeed, the police top the terrorists'€™ death list. Terrorists were held responsible for the raid on Hamparan Perak Police post in the North Sumatra regency of Deli Serdang in September 2010, which left three officers dead. After the suicide attack in Cirebon in 2011, suspected terrorists attacked three police posts in the Central Java city of Surakarta around the Idul Fitri holiday in 2012; killing an officer. Only last month two terror suspects threw a Molotov cocktail at a police post in Tasikmalaya, forcing the police to shoot one of the attackers.

Terrorism analyst Noor Huda Ismail of the Institute for International Peace Building says terrorists began to shift their target from Western interests to the police in 2009. The cycle of revenge only fed by the police'€™s attempts to clamp-down terror cells in the country.

An autopsy found that the suicide bomber in Poso was not among the police'€™s 20 most-wanted terror suspects, opening up the possibility that he was part of a new terrorist cell operating in the regency. But whatever group he belonged to, his act shows that the fury that set Poso ablaze during the bloody sectarian conflict, between Christians and Muslims in 1999-2000, has not been completely doused. BNPT head Ansyad Mbaai said terrorists are trying to revive the bloodshed through sporadic attacks but to no avail, at least so far.

In the anticorruption field, the public was flabbergasted at the news that three ministries dealing with the nation'€™s character building, the National Education Ministry, the Religious Affairs Ministry and the Youth and Sports Ministry, were infested with corrupt practice.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono asked the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) on Wednesday to launch an investigation into alleged budget markups totaling Rp 700 billion (US$71.2 million) in the directorate general for culture, which implicates Deputy Education and Culture Minister Wiendu Nuryanti. The case came to the fore after the ministry'€™s inspector general, Haryono Umar, a former KPK deputy chairman, reported Wiendu'€™s alleged role in the appointment of companies to hold some of the ministry'€™s cultural promotional events last year.

The ministry had earlier come under fire after the Jakarta Corruption Court sentenced former Democratic Party lawmaker Angelina Sondakh to four-and-a-half years for accepting Rp 34.9 billion in bribes in connection with various state projects, including at 16 state universities. The KPK has moved to probe into the cases but yet to name any suspecst, although reports say some more House lawmakers will be implicated.

The government has taken strategic measures to eradicate corruption in the big spending Education Ministry and Religious Affairs Ministry, among others, appointing former KPK leaders to the inspector general post in the two ministries. At the Religious Affairs Ministry, inspector general Muhammad Yasin, played a key role in unveiling graft in Koran procurement.

After Golkar Party lawmaker Zulkarnaen Djabar was sentenced to15 years of jail sentence in the Koran saga, the KPK is turning its eyes to other people named in the proceedings. Certainly, Zulkarnaen was not the only one to get his hands dirty and Golkar wants to come clean as evidenced in the rift between the party'€™s deputy chairman Priyo Budi Santoso and unnamed rivals within the party.

Priyo accused certain Golkar leaders on Monday of trying to unseat him by linking him to the Koran graft case. In fact, another Golkar member found guilty in the scandal, Fahd El Fouz, had told the court that Priyo asked for 1 percent kickback from the Rp 72 billion project.

To make matters worse, deputy House speaker Priyo paid an unannounced visit to Fahd in Sukamiskin special prison in Bandung on Saturday last week in a move that quickly drew criticism from fellow House and Golkar leaders. The House'€™s ethics council deputy chairman Ali Maschan Moesa deemed the visit unethical due to a possible conflict of interests.

The public, however, will for a while shift attention from the war on corruption and terrorism to the infighting among political elites over subsidized fuel prices hike. But, despite who wins, the people will be affected the most.

'€” Dwi Atmanta