Photo credit: Flickr user London Summit
Indonesian President began his second five-year term on Tuesday, following a resounding electoral victory in July. His success at the polls has been attributed in part to his tough stance on corruption—not an easy challenge to confront in a country rife with graft. However, in recent weeks efforts to provide greater transparency, which are considered indispensable to provide more tools to corruption-fighters, have faced significant resistance from the country’s parliament.
At the end of September, Indonesia’s parliament diluted the powers of the country’s special Corrupt Crimes Court and the independent Corruption Eradication Commission (known as the KPK), arguing that their powers were too far-reaching. The KPK can conduct wiretaps without a warrant, while the Court is known to hand down harsher sentences than Indonesia’s regular judiciary. But advocates of the institutions claimed that the impact of the highly-effective Court and KPK will decline if constraints are imposed and that any backtracking will raise red flags among investors.
In the end, much to the dismay and resistance of President Yudhoyono, parliament managed to weaken both institutions. Although intervention by the president prevented the dissolution of the KPK’s right to prosecute and tap telephones, the bill passed by parliament allows for the Court to staff a majority of its judges from the regular justice system. Previously, a majority of the judges had to come from outside of the government—including practicing lawyers, academics, and retired prosecutors, among others. As career judges do not tend to have impeccable reputations in corruption cases in Indonesia, such a requirement was seen to allow the court more independence.
The weakening of the KPK and the Corrupt Crimes Court was not the only blow to Indonesia’s anticorruption efforts last month. On September 15, Indonesian police named two of the four deputy chairmen of the KPK as suspects in a bribery case. The facts of the crime are a bit dubious (according to the Economist, one of the suspects was in Peru when he allegedly took a bribe in Jakarta), but nevertheless the two have been formally accused of abuse of power and taking bribes. To top off the anticorruption campaign’s woes, the well-respected head of the KPK went on trial in early October for allegedly masterminding the drive-by shooting of Nasrudin Zulkarnaen, the state-owned pharmaceuticals company director, in what appears to be a love triangle-turned-deadly.
Finally, the president’s new cabinet—expected to lack experience to carry out substantial economic overhaul—raises doubts among analysts that necessary institutional reforms to combat corruption will take place in the near future.
Combating graft is always a frustrating endeavor, let alone in one of the most corrupt countries in the world, and resistance to such efforts is nothing new. Corruption is endemic to the expansive web of Indonesian bureaucracy as a result of Suharto’s 32-year-long presidency, a kleptocracy marked by brutality and cronyism. Following his death in 1998, corruption was so entrenched in the Indonesian bureaucratic apparatus that bribes were an expected part of nearly all citizen interactions with the state. Despite efforts to reduce opportunities for corruption, such practices have not been sufficiently abated. Note that petty corruption can be combated much more effectively through technocratic reforms than grand corruption, which inevitably hinges on political will.The KPK was created in 2003 to investigate large-scale corruption, defined as official misconduct that cost the state more than US$85,000. Its success at first was highly mixed and it was criticized for failing to convict prosecutors and police. According to Freedom in the World, a 2008 survey revealed that while the KPK is considered highly credible relative to other Indonesian government institutions, almost three-fourths of those polled thought the Commission had not created enough of a “culture of shame” to prevent state officials from engaging in corruption.
However, in more recent years, the Commission has been lauded for its progress, albeit modest, in rooting out corruption and improving Indonesia’s image. According to the New York Times, since 2003 the commission has achieved a 100 percent conviction rate in 86 cases of bribery and graft brought to trial. In 2008, specifically, a string of high-level prosecutions helped solidify the legitimacy of the Commission and fostered an increased fear of prosecution within Indonesia’s political institutions. That October, the former governor of the Bank of Indonesia was slapped with a five-year sentence for embezzling US$10.3 million in central bank funds. Though critics claimed that such a sentence was not harsh enough to serve as an effective deterrent, generally speaking it was seen as a step in the right direction.
Efforts to combat corruption have been made on a more macro level as well. Direct elections at the local level, held since 2005, have helped to reduce patronage. A number of local initiatives, for example, have reduced the likelihood of bribery by simplifying the process of obtaining business permits and making secondary school applications an online process. Such efforts bumped up Indonesia’s rating in Transparency International’s 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index; in 2007, Indonesia was ranked 143rd of 180 countries (with 180 being Somalia, the most corrupt), while in 2008, it moved up to 126th place.
That said, 126th place is still not an enviable place to be. Corruption is still rampant in all branches of government on both the local and national level and impunity is pervasive. Moreover, with the recent pushback by Parliament, it appears that the reform project is at risk of backsliding.
Few countries have managed to successfully wage the battle against corruption without setbacks. However, given the fight’s centrality to the future of Indonesia’s institutions and the country’s ability to sustain economic growth, President Yudhoyono should certainly consider spending some of his hard-earned political capital to ensure that Indonesia’s reputation as a country on the right trajectory remains intact.
At the end of September, Indonesia’s parliament diluted the powers of the country’s special Corrupt Crimes Court and the independent Corruption Eradication Commission (known as the KPK), arguing that their powers were too far-reaching. The KPK can conduct wiretaps without a warrant, while the Court is known to hand down harsher sentences than Indonesia’s regular judiciary. But advocates of the institutions claimed that the impact of the highly-effective Court and KPK will decline if constraints are imposed and that any backtracking will raise red flags among investors.
In the end, much to the dismay and resistance of President Yudhoyono, parliament managed to weaken both institutions. Although intervention by the president prevented the dissolution of the KPK’s right to prosecute and tap telephones, the bill passed by parliament allows for the Court to staff a majority of its judges from the regular justice system. Previously, a majority of the judges had to come from outside of the government—including practicing lawyers, academics, and retired prosecutors, among others. As career judges do not tend to have impeccable reputations in corruption cases in Indonesia, such a requirement was seen to allow the court more independence.
The weakening of the KPK and the Corrupt Crimes Court was not the only blow to Indonesia’s anticorruption efforts last month. On September 15, Indonesian police named two of the four deputy chairmen of the KPK as suspects in a bribery case. The facts of the crime are a bit dubious (according to the Economist, one of the suspects was in Peru when he allegedly took a bribe in Jakarta), but nevertheless the two have been formally accused of abuse of power and taking bribes. To top off the anticorruption campaign’s woes, the well-respected head of the KPK went on trial in early October for allegedly masterminding the drive-by shooting of Nasrudin Zulkarnaen, the state-owned pharmaceuticals company director, in what appears to be a love triangle-turned-deadly.
Finally, the president’s new cabinet—expected to lack experience to carry out substantial economic overhaul—raises doubts among analysts that necessary institutional reforms to combat corruption will take place in the near future.
Combating graft is always a frustrating endeavor, let alone in one of the most corrupt countries in the world, and resistance to such efforts is nothing new. Corruption is endemic to the expansive web of Indonesian bureaucracy as a result of Suharto’s 32-year-long presidency, a kleptocracy marked by brutality and cronyism. Following his death in 1998, corruption was so entrenched in the Indonesian bureaucratic apparatus that bribes were an expected part of nearly all citizen interactions with the state. Despite efforts to reduce opportunities for corruption, such practices have not been sufficiently abated. Note that petty corruption can be combated much more effectively through technocratic reforms than grand corruption, which inevitably hinges on political will.The KPK was created in 2003 to investigate large-scale corruption, defined as official misconduct that cost the state more than US$85,000. Its success at first was highly mixed and it was criticized for failing to convict prosecutors and police. According to Freedom in the World, a 2008 survey revealed that while the KPK is considered highly credible relative to other Indonesian government institutions, almost three-fourths of those polled thought the Commission had not created enough of a “culture of shame” to prevent state officials from engaging in corruption.
However, in more recent years, the Commission has been lauded for its progress, albeit modest, in rooting out corruption and improving Indonesia’s image. According to the New York Times, since 2003 the commission has achieved a 100 percent conviction rate in 86 cases of bribery and graft brought to trial. In 2008, specifically, a string of high-level prosecutions helped solidify the legitimacy of the Commission and fostered an increased fear of prosecution within Indonesia’s political institutions. That October, the former governor of the Bank of Indonesia was slapped with a five-year sentence for embezzling US$10.3 million in central bank funds. Though critics claimed that such a sentence was not harsh enough to serve as an effective deterrent, generally speaking it was seen as a step in the right direction.
Efforts to combat corruption have been made on a more macro level as well. Direct elections at the local level, held since 2005, have helped to reduce patronage. A number of local initiatives, for example, have reduced the likelihood of bribery by simplifying the process of obtaining business permits and making secondary school applications an online process. Such efforts bumped up Indonesia’s rating in Transparency International’s 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index; in 2007, Indonesia was ranked 143rd of 180 countries (with 180 being Somalia, the most corrupt), while in 2008, it moved up to 126th place.
That said, 126th place is still not an enviable place to be. Corruption is still rampant in all branches of government on both the local and national level and impunity is pervasive. Moreover, with the recent pushback by Parliament, it appears that the reform project is at risk of backsliding.
Few countries have managed to successfully wage the battle against corruption without setbacks. However, given the fight’s centrality to the future of Indonesia’s institutions and the country’s ability to sustain economic growth, President Yudhoyono should certainly consider spending some of his hard-earned political capital to ensure that Indonesia’s reputation as a country on the right trajectory remains intact.
