July 26, 2009
Corruption Fighters Rouse Resistance in Indonesia
Guards in Jakarta, Indonesia, at the offices of the Corruption
Eradication Commission,
which has attracted praise and opposition.
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesia, a country that has long been regarded as one of
the world’s most corrupt, has won praise for combating graft in recent years.
Leading the charge has been a single powerful government institution — one
whose successes have drawn fierce opposition that now threatens its existence.
Armed with tools like warrantless wiretaps, the Corruption Eradication
Commission confronted head-on the endemic corruption that remains as a legacy
of President Suharto’s 32-year-long kleptocracy. Since it started operating in
late 2003, the commission has investigated, prosecuted and achieved a
100-percent conviction rate in 86 cases of bribery and graft related to
government procurements and budgets.
Local reporters camp daily outside the commission’s imposing eight-story
building here, where high-ranking businessmen, bureaucrats, bankers, governors,
diplomats, lawmakers, prosecutors, police officials and other previously
untouchable members of Indonesian society have been made to discover a
phenomenon new to this country: the perp walk.
One of Indonesia’s most famous rock bands, Slank, even performed outside the
building last year to show support. The band took aim at members of Parliament,
the institution generally considered the country’s most corrupt, by singing:
“Who draws up laws? Draft bills for bucks.”
According to Transparency International, a Berlin-based private organization
dedicated to curbing corruption, the modest progress Indonesia has made against
corruption in the past half decade has resulted from the commission’s
investigations and reforms inside a single ministry, the Ministry of Finance.
But now the nation’s Parliament, police force and attorney general’s office
have increasingly been caught in the cross hairs of the anticorruption
commission’s investigations, and members of those bodies are trying to
undermine the commission, according to commission officials and watchdog groups.
The attacks against the commission grew so intense that Indonesia’s newly
re-elected president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, summoned Indonesia’s top law
enforcement officials on a recent morning. Sounding sometimes like a marriage
counselor, he told them to avoid “friction” through better “communication” and
“respect.”
The meeting shone a rare, public spotlight on the particular difficulties of
fighting corruption here. At stake, experts say, is the very survival of the
anticorruption commission, universally referred to as K.P.K., the initials of
its name in Indonesian.
“It’s now a very dangerous time for the K.P.K.,” said Teten Masduki, the
secretary general of Transparency International’s chapter in Indonesia.
“Whether it’s the police, attorney general’s office or Parliament, there is a
systematic agenda to destroy the K.P.K.”
Some critics say that the commission’s powers are too draconian and that
defendants receive inadequate protection at a special Corruption Court where
they are tried. Even Mr. Yudhoyono, who has made fighting corruption a main
theme of his administration, said recently that the commission “seems to be
accountable only to God.”
Haryono Umar, one of the commission’s four vice chairmen, said that its
investigators were merely following the 2002 law that created it, and that the
commission was accountable to Parliament and other government agencies.
“According to the law, corruption is an extraordinary crime, so that’s why it
should be handled by extraordinary means,” Mr. Haryono said.
“But because we are handling corruption very aggressively,” he said, “many
people are not happy with the K.P.K.” However, he denied that other law
enforcement officials were among them.
Likewise, Inspector Gen. Nanan Soekarna, a spokesman for the national police,
said, “We have good relations with the K.P.K.”
Current and former commission officials said relations with police officials
and prosecutors started off well but grew strained in the past year after
corruption investigators began focusing on the police and the attorney
general’s office, long considered among the most corrupt institutions here.
Last year, a former high-ranking police official was sentenced to two years in
prison for misappropriating funds while serving as ambassador to Malaysia.
“Now our relations are no good because the K.P.K. started picking on their high
officials,” said Erry Riyana Hardjapamekas, a former deputy chairman at the
commission. “We suspect each other.”
More recently, an active high-ranking police official, Susno Duadji, was
wiretapped by the commission and caught asking for a $1 million bribe. In an
interview with Tempo, the country’s most respected magazine, the police
official said he knew he was being wiretapped and played along with the caller;
in an allusion to the anticorruption commission and the police, he said, “It’s
like a gecko challenging a crocodile.”
The police, through leaks to the news media, threatened to arrest several
commission officials on corruption charges of their own and in a bizarre case
involving their former chairman, Antasari Azhar. In May, Mr. Antasari was
arrested and accused of ordering the murder of a prominent businessman who was
blackmailing him over an affair with their mutual love interest, a golf caddy,
according to the news media.
Watchdog groups say the anticorruption commission is facing a potentially more
effective, though passive, challenge from Parliament.
The challenge comes in the form of delays in passing new legislation governing
the commission and the court, after the Constitutional Court ruled in 2006 that
the law establishing the two was unconstitutional. The Constitutional Court
gave the government until the end of 2009 to create a new law.
Watchdog groups say that Parliament has been sitting on the proposed bill in a
strategy to kill the anticorruption commission. Transparency International
rates Parliament — nine of whose members have been convicted by the special
corruption court since 2007, mostly for bribery — as Indonesia’s most corrupt
institution.
Gayus Lumbuun, a lawmaker in the committee reviewing the proposed bill, said
its passage was possible before the end of the year. “We agree with T.I.,” he
said in an interview, referring to Transparency International’s rating. “But we
hope that T.I. also sees that there are members of Parliament who are ethical
and trying to do good.”
Last year, Mr. Gayus led other lawmakers in threatening to sue Slank, the rock
band, for singing about legislators who “draft bills for bucks.” But they
dropped the idea after one of their own was arrested for bribery around the
same time, and later sentenced to eight years in prison.
Even if the bill passes, the anticorruption effort could be weakened, according
to Danang Widojoko, a coordinator at Indonesia Corruption Watch, a private
organization. He said the bill would strip the commission of its prosecutorial
authority and make the court less independent.
If Parliament fails to pass the bill, the president could extend the life of
the anticorruption commission and court by passing a special regulation to be
reviewed by Parliament. Mr. Yudhoyono was elected to his second term by a large
margin. But he also has longtime supporters in business in a country where
companies still depend largely on government contracts, experts said.
“If he’s serious about combating corruption, he’ll make sure the K.P.K.
survives,” said Mr. Teten of Transparency International. “That would make the
people happy, but I don’t know about the others.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/world/asia/26indo.html
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
