What’s wrong with corruption?

What’s wrong with corruption? Ratih Hardjono  ;  A Former Journalist, Secretary-General of the Indonesian Community for Democracy (KID)

JAKARTA POST, 27 Maret 2013

  

One can’t help but be imaginative watching the foyer of the Corruption Eradication Commission’s (KPK) building becoming a fashion catwalk of beautiful people entering the building on charges of corruption.  The rat-a-tat-tat sound of stiletto heels and the scent of perfume wafts through the room before the beautiful people enter and then linger in the KPK’s interrogation rooms. Could this have an influence? Aren’t we all human?  Photos of convicted Angelina Sondakh in the embrace of KPK investigator Raden Brotoseno are widely viewed on the Internet. Make no mistake, corruption is being committed by men and women, but I can’t help feel that all this corrupt glamour on parade is perhaps being perceived by the public as one way of getting rich quickly. What is most disturbing is the confidence these people have even after they are charged with and convicted of corruption. They show no grief or regret.  Occasionally there are tears, but not for long. One local woman in my lower middle-class neighborhood said to me: “Life is so tough, everything is expensive. I wouldn’t mind going to jail for six years but still get to keep the tens of millions of dollars in my bank account. I could send my kids to university overseas and live a comfortable life ever after. Jail can’t be that bad, they still look good in court.” Even more disturbing is the lack of fundamental understanding among ordinary Indonesians as to why corruption is evil. This is despite the media coverage and the public campaigns run by NGOs and the KPK.  The glamorous pictures of the handsome Muhammad Nazaruddin and the elegant Miranda Goeltom are actually in direct opposition to the public anticorruption drive by the KPK.  It would be different if the pictures show Nazaruddin in a KPK detainee shirt and Miranda Goeltom turning up to the hearings with her hair uncoiffed.  “Perception is everything”. Words alone are not enough! An image is being projected through the media that does not show that embezzlers are being punished. The current case of Djoko Susilo and his young beautiful wives looking innocent serves to reinforce this problem.  The scale of corruption in Indonesia is making Indonesia poorer. As noted economist Thee Kian Wie points out, no country with such a high degree of corruption has been able to become truly prosperous, democratic and equitable. This is because an enormous amount of funds are accumulated by corrupt officials; funds that should be invested in sectors of the economy that could aid Indonesia’s development, such as health and education.  The KPK announced in December 2012 that there were 1,408 cases of corruption between 2004 and 2011 involving Rp 39.3 trillion (US$4 billion). This amount of money could have been used to build 393,000 basic homes or create 3.9 million university graduates (Kompas, Dec. 5, 2012). What about the embezzlers who have not been caught and the money they siphoned off? How much money did we lose?  According to the KPK, 332 people have been charged with corruption, 41 percent of whom were civil servants, 19 percent House of Representatives members and 20 percent businesspeople.  The involvement of civil servants is prominent because as individuals they have access to power and financial resources. The poor lack opportunity and access to power and don’t even know where the money is! This perhaps explains why the catwalk at the KPK building is dominated by beautiful people who are not poor but just simply greedy. These embezzlers have no shame and hide behind the façade that they are innocent and that they are there because of political circumstances rather than graft. The concept of corruption among traditional communities is still a blurred grey area because there is a lack of clear separation between public and private spaces. If one is the head of a traditional community, an adat leader, there are numerous demands and responsibilities that they must fulfill. The fact is that most adat leaders are richer than their followers. Their role as head of a community is inherited and gives them access to power at the village and subdistrict levels, but whatever financial gain the adat leader obtains, much of it gets dispersed within the community.  There are serious problems with this, especially with Indonesia’s economy modernizing, where there must be a clear separation between public and private spaces. This also points to the fact that we have not managed to accommodate our adat leaders and our adat laws in a modernizing Indonesia.  When it comes to corruption, there is a difference between adat leaders and the beautiful people that the KPK deals with. The adat leaders have to fulfill the demands of their community, otherwise their role fades away and the communal structure of the village starts to disintegrate.  Corrupt civil servants and lawmakers are corrupt for personal gain and want to remain in power and become rich by bribing whoever needs to be bribed in order for them to obtain this personal goal.  One crucial element lacking in our judicial system is the absence of a mechanism to recover stolen assets because our laws do not specifically regulate the definition of asset recovery.  Yet, Article 51 of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) makes is very clear that asset recovery is a fundamental principle. As my neighbor said, what is the problem with corruption? You still get to keep the money.  There are talks of a government bill on asset recovery being in the pipeline. The question is: How is it that the KPK was established in 2003 and it was not equipped with such a law? It’s like having a tiger with no teeth.  Could it be that the Indonesian elites who could have made this happen deliberately did not do so in order to use the KPK as a political threat to their opposition and to erect another political stage? ●