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Komnas HAM finds KPK civics test marred by rights violations
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Senior Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) investigator Novel Baswedan (right) walks after reporting the antigraft body leaders to the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) on May 24, 2021. The employees reported the KPK commissioners pertaining to the controversial civic knowledge test for employees as part of the mandatory transition to civil servant employment status. (Antara/M. Risyal Hidayat)
T
he highly controversial civic knowledge test that led to the dismissal of 51 Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) employees was marred by numerous human rights violations, the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) said.
In its report released on Monday, Komnas HAM revealed that the organizing of the civic knowledge test, aimed at assessing KPK employees' allegiance to the national ideology of Pancasila, was plagued with “baseless stigmatization” and “illegal conduct”, saying the process failed to uphold human rights.
The findings came after the Indonesian Ombudsman revealed in late July that the organizing of the test was marred with maladministration. This includes mismanagement of the deliberation of an internal KPK regulation, which later became the only document giving a legal basis for the organizing of the test between March and April.
The civic knowledge test — consisting of several stages, namely a written test, profiling and an interview — was officially part of a transition for the independent KPK employees into the state bureaucracy, which was mandated by the revised KPK Law that was passed following a speedy deliberation at the House of Representatives in 2019. The law sets a two-year deadline for all parties to implement the change, which is slated to end this year.
Read also: PDI-P, Komnas HAM at loggerheads over KPK civic test controversy
Komnas HAM member M. Choirul Anam said the rights commission strongly suspected that the civic knowledge test had been used as a pretext to oust KPK employees with certain backgrounds, in particular those who had been labelled as “Taliban” — or Muslim radicals who are opposed to Pancasila.
“The Taliban-labeling within the KPK was deliberately developed and attached to KPK employees with certain backgrounds as part of their identity and certain [religious] practices,” Anam said in a livestreamed news conference on Monday. “The label was also attached to KPK employees who could not be controlled.
