T

he House of Representatives, deemed one of the most corrupt institutions in the country according to an opinion poll last year, will be working together with the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to find ways to prevent House members from committing corruption.

'€œToday, the House is working with the KPK to draw up a kind of map to show potential corruption among lawmakers,'€ Deputy House Speaker Pramono Anung told reporters at KPK headquarters in Kuningan, South Jakarta.

He said the mapping process was crucial to prevent graft in the country'€™s legislative body.

'€œAs we all know, the main functions of the House is to legislate, monitor and budget. In all these areas, authority is bestowed upon the House and sometimes that authority is prone to corruption,'€ he said.

Pramono added that the House would open itself to be studied by the KPK.

Besides that, the KPK was more than welcome to probe graft cases implicating House members, including House leaders, according to Pramono, who is also a politician with the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).

'€œUnlike other institutions that might seek to hide things, we would never prevent the KPK from conducting an investigation or questioning House members because we are committed [to combating corruption],'€ he said.

Pramono later mentioned a few scenarios in which corruption could take place in the House. '€œThere'€™s a possibility in the legislative function, for instance, if a law is drafted based on pressure from certain, interested parties,'€ he said.

KPK spokesman Johan Budi said, meanwhile, that the antigraft body had not yet completed a comprehensive study on corruption in the House.

The KPK first decided to undertake such a study, Johan added, after it arrested several of the House'€™s budget committee members, including Wa Ode Nurhayati, Angelina Sondakh and Muhammad Nazaruddin, who were implicated in major corruption cases. The budget committee was found to be rife with corruption, and some of its members guilty of massive budget abuses.

Nazaruddin, for example, is known '€” in addition to his own crimes '€” to have blown the whistle on several high-profile corruption cases, including the Hambalang sports complex scandal and the procurement of driving simulators by the National Police Traffic Corps.

He was the first to point the finger at former Democratic Party chairman Anas Urbaningrum over the Hambalang case, accusing him of accepting bribes from construction firm PT Adhi Karya. Anas was later named a suspect by the KPK for accepting the bribery money.

Nazaruddin'€™s latest claims concern the alleged involvement of House members in graft cases relating to some 30 government projects.

The projects include the construction of the Constitutional Court building and the procurement of security guard uniforms by the Home Ministry.

Besides budget committee members, the KPK has also arrested other House commission members, such as PDI-P politician Emir Moeis, the chairman of Commission XI overseeing finance; and suspended Golkar Party lawmaker Zulkarnaen Djabar, who served on Commission VIII overseeing religion.

The KPK named Emir a suspect for allegedly accepting US$300,000 in bribes from energy infrastructure company PT Alstom Indonesia, a subsidiary of French-based conglomerate Alstom, relating to the construction of a coal-fired power plant in Tarahan, Lampung, in 2004.

Zulkarnaen, meanwhile, was sentenced to 15 years'€™ imprisonment for rigging the tender for the procurement of copies of the Koran and laboratory equipment at the Religious Affairs Ministry.