Southeast Asia's war on corruption Michael Vatikiotis International Herald Tribune
WEDNESDAY, JULY 13, 2005 BANGKOK Southeast Asian leaders once calibrated popularity based on economic growth and the number of rural clinics per capita. Not anymore. Popularity today is determined by how successfully a leader wages war on corruption. In Thailand, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is facing the first significant dent in his popularity since coming to office in 2001. One reason is that people don't believe government denials about a well-documented bid to mark up imported airport scanner equipment. In Malaysia, Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi is under pressure to implement recommendations from an independent royal commission to clean up corruption in the police force. And in Indonesia, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is finding corruption everywhere he looks, and promising to stamp it out as pledged in last year's election. With democracy now more established in the region, the fight against corruption has become more than a ritual promise to foreign donors. People sense the power of the ballot box, and one of their priorities is to stop the government stealing from them. For decades, no matter how well the economy has done, or how well people were looked after by the state, ordinary people have fallen prey to avaricious officials. Even something as simple as renewing a driver's license in Indonesia requires an extra payment. But while economic growth isn't so hard to achieve in the current environment, corruption is a tough nut to crack. Vested interests that helped finance the political campaigns of these leaders are the principal targets in the war on corruption; in some cases the rot goes so deep it will take more than a few show trials to clear out the deadwood. Who would expect an independent civil body like Indonesia's election monitoring agency, or the company that prints banknotes, or the hajj pilgrimage fund to be corrupt? So leaders like Thaksin, Abdullah and Yudhoyono, if they fail to make measurable progress, face defeat at the next election. The good news is that none of these leaders have so far backed away from their pledge to wage war on corruption. The pace of their advance is slow, too slow for some critics, but the chances of finally grappling with the culture of corruption that exerts a significant drag on economic efficiency and is a constant source of social discontent, are at last fairly good. Yudhoyono has perhaps taken the boldest strides. Just in the past month, he has detained two former ministers for questioning, jailed a former provincial governor, put another on trial and launched investigations into more than a dozen state-owned enterprises. "Once the anticorruption wheels and machine runs," he told an audience in Manila recently, "it must never stop." Local observers are impressed, but are withholding judgment until heads really start to roll. Key to making this happen will be a legal system that is itself immune to corruption. There is still a tendency in Indonesia to go easy on the rich and well-connected. In Malaysia, Abdullah Badawi scored high marks when the ruling United Malays National Organization suspended a party vice president after finding him guilty of vote-buying. Mohammed Isa Abdul Samad's censure last month sent shock waves through the party and many fear it will hurt Abdullah at a party congress this month. Encouragingly, other senior party officials closed ranks behind the prime minister. Many Malaysians, however, want to see institutional checks in place rather than just watch a few victims' heads roll. In this respect Abdullah's response to the royal commission on the police will serve as a better test of his resolve. The report found the police to be corrupt and abusive and lays out concrete recommendations to tackle the problem. Thaksin Shinawatra, who was himself accused of corruption and cleared of charges in 2001, will score points because a deputy commerce minister resigned after a criminal complaint was filed against a company owned by his family. Now Thaksin must deal with his transport minister, Suriya Jungrungreankit, who survived censure in Parliament over the scanner scandal, but who is tainted in the public's eye. Again, corruption won't be defeated by simply taking heads. Institutional reform is needed badly. Legal certainty and budgetary expansion to help foster a cleaner bureaucracy will help. But perhaps it is democracy that in the end will act as the most effective elixir - democracy at the grass roots. Indonesia's recent elections for mayors and governors up and down the country stand testament to this. Generally, those who won races against established political forces promised to serve the people, not steal from them. And those who lost, often from positions of considerable political strength, were regarded as corrupt. (Michael Vatikiotis is a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.) [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Post message: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] List owner : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
