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Govt flips script on declining corruption score
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Anticorruption People’s Movement activists rally at the Digulis traffic circle in Pontianak, West Kalimantan. (Antara/Jessica Helena Wuysang)
T
he government has flipped the script on its recent poor showing on the Corruption Perception Index (CPI), using it as an excuse to rally support for the controversial Job Creation Law as a means of eliminating red tape.
The latest global study conducted by Transparency International illustrates the scale of the regression in the country’s fight against corruption as the government has been focusing too much on its economy-forward approach to development and improving international competitiveness.
But a senior minister said otherwise, claiming that the government’s efforts to streamline business rules through the enactment of the controversial Job Creation Law in late 2020 were intended to centralize the business licensing process in order to break the chain of corruption.
“The problems lay in the licensing bureaucracy and collusion in the process. That is why the government proposed [the drafting of the Job Creation Law] using an omnibus method," Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Mahfud MD told reporters on Friday
President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo recently issued a government regulation in lieu of law (Perppu) on job creation to resuscitate the jobs law, which was declared last year by the Constitutional Court as unconstitutional because it used the unrecognized omnibus method. Critics accused the government of bypassing proper debate in the legislature.
The jobs law revised dozens of laws all at once to streamline business rules in Southeast Asia's largest economy, which is notorious for its onerous bureaucracy.
Read also: Perppu replacing jobs law gets mixed reception
