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mid recent criticism, the police, especially the Jakarta Police, deserve credit for their quick move to unveil corrupt practices behind the lengthy dwelling times at Tanjung Priok seaport, which in mid-June triggered President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo'€™s anger.

The Jakarta Police have named five suspects, including former director general of foreign trade Partogi Panga-
ribuan. To facilitate the investigation Trade Minister Rachmat Gobel has dismissed Partogi and three other officials implicated in the case.

During his surprise visit to the seaport on June 17, the angry President said he would seek his '€œown way'€ to settle the inefficient port handling. Only on Sunday and after a series of actions by the Jakarta Police that included a search of the Trade Ministry'€™s office was the President'€™s plan made public. Jokowi admitted on Sunday to having instructed the police to intervene after he found that his subordinates'€™ efforts to cope with the long-standing problem were ineffective.

Jokowi is not the only one who has lost patience with the dwelling times, or the length of time that cargo sits in a terminal'€™s in-transit storage area, which averages 5.5 days and has been blamed for the high logistics costs in the country, the highest in the ASEAN region.

Of course, as Jokowi stated, the public, including local business players, has to bear the costs of the inefficiency by paying more for the goods they purchase. The high logistics costs have also rendered investment in the country less attractive.

The Jakarta Police'€™s special taskforce set up to investigate the case revealed that paying backhanders to officials at the Directorate General of Foreign Trade was a common practice when importers sought a speedy issuance of import permit letters. One investigator alleged that importers used to go directly to Partogi or his staff depending on how close they were to the senior official.

The first lesson learned from the police'€™s findings so far is of course the fact that bureaucratic reform remains a work in progress before we can realize the clean and efficient governance that we have been yearning for since the start of the reformasi movement in 1998. The ongoing investigation is a strong indication that red tape and, hence, corruption, still characterizes our bureaucracy, regardless of the remuneration program intended to keep civil servants from accepting bribes.

As seaport handling is just part and parcel of Indonesia'€™s large-scale bureaucracy, the investigation should therefore be followed up with reinvigorating the role of inspectorate generals as part of the internal supervision mechanism. The Jakarta Police'€™s move can serve as shock therapy, but the functioning of the bureaucracy partly depends on an effective oversight mechanism from within.

Unfortunately, the problem of internal supervision in the bureaucracy lies in the absence of independence, rather than integrity, on the part of the inspectors. In the hierarchy of our bureaucracy the inspector general falls under the head of an institution, which enables the latter to order the former to drop or halt an investigation