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Public trust in KPK unscathed despite House inquiry move

A barrage of criticisms leveled by the House of Representatives against the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), which is now the subject of a House inquiry, has failed to erode public trust in the antigraft body

Haeril Halim (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Fri, July 21, 2017

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Public trust in KPK unscathed despite House inquiry move

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barrage of criticisms leveled by the House of Representatives against the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), which is now the subject of a House inquiry, has failed to erode public trust in the antigraft body.

A recent public opinion survey finds that the KPK is perceived as the most trusted institution in the country, while political parties and the House are perceived as the least trusted institutions.

In the survey, released on Thursday, the KPK tops the list of most trusted institutions, while political parties receive the poorest score of 35 percent followed by the House with 51 percent.

It also finds that 58 percent of the 2,235 respondents said they were very satisfied with the work of the KPK while 12 percent said they were satisfied, 24 percent unsatisfied, 2 percent very unsatisfied and 4 percent gave no answer.

The President comes in second place after the KPK with a score of 68 percent, followed by the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) with 72 percent and the Supreme Court with 66 percent.

Shortly after the KPK stepped up its investigation into the high profile e-ID case that implicates dozens of lawmakers in March, some lawmakers initiated a proposal to launch a political inquiry into the KPK and issued statements questioning the organization’s legitimacy as a law enforcement body.

The inquiry is now ongoing despite opposition from the public.

On Thursday, the official Instagram account of the House, @DPR_RI, which has 96,800 followers, posted two pictures alongside negative sentiments directed toward the KPK.

One caption reads: “KPK’s job is only to eavesdrop and it relies very much on telephone tapping [to investigate corruption].”

Instead of receiving public support, a majority of its followers condemned the posts.

“This is the office account of the House, isn’t it? Why it does not show any respect to itself. It is weird,” wrote @riannazheid.

Despite high appreciation for the work of the KPK, 87 percent of respondents claimed they had not seen any improvements in terms of corruption eradication over the past year, the same score the same survey found in 2016.

KPK commissioner La Ode Muhammad Syarif said the results would boost the spirits of the KPK to step up its investigation into graft cases despite increasing threats from the House. “We are happy to see increasing public support and we will increase our performance to eradicate corruption in the country,” he said.

The Polling Center conducted the survey from April 5 until May 9 across 34 provinces, 177 regencies and 212 villages in collaboration with the Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW).

Polling Center senior researcher Henny Susilowati said the increasing public support for the KPK came about as a result of the massive graft investigations unveiled by the antigraft body to catch big fish in a number of cases over the past year. “The KPK is trusted by the public to eradicate corruption in the country,” Henny said.

ICW researcher Febri Hendri said whatever was done by the House to undermine the KPK would not receive public support because the image of the House was already degraded in the minds of public. “If the House claims that it wants to fix the KPK through the inquiry, members of the public will not buy that claim. How can it fix other institutions while at the same time failing to correct itself?” Febri said.

The House inquiry team gained notoriety on July 7 when its members visited and interviewed a number of graft convicts at Sukamiskin Prison in Bandung, West Java to collect testimony on allegedly abusive investigations conducted by the KPK.

The move sparked an outcry from the public because all of those interviewed were convicted of corruption and the Jakarta Corruption Court did not find any irregularities in the KPK’s handling of their cases in the past.

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