Lindsay Murdoch, Jakarta – A leading armed forces reformer has made an unprecedented attack on corrupt generals.
Lieutenant-General Agus Wirahadikusumah called on the Government to cleanse the military and police of what he called the cancer of corruption. "It's now up to the Government – to act or not to act," he wrote in the latest issue of the magazine Tempo .
General Wirahadikusumah said the military "can no longer hide behind the shield of military secrecy to avoid demand for transparency in all sectors of life. What should be kept secret from the public should be limited only to such information as a military operational plan and armaments," he said.
President Abdurrahman Wahid last month removed General Wirahadikusumah as commander of Kostrad, the army's main combat force, after he had sacked two officers for alleged corruption and questioned the withdrawal of millions of dollars from military-owned businesses.
Mr Wahid is believed to have come under enormous pressure from serving and retired anti-reformist officers, including the former armed forces commander, General Wiranto, to remove General Wirahadikusumah. The general's appointment to the Kostrad job early this year was widely seen as a boost for the military's fledgling reformist movement.
During the 32-year rule of former president Soeharto the armed forces set up a network of companies that reaped hundreds of millions of dollars a year from monopolies and protected businesses. They have operated in almost complete secrecy and are not subject to government auditing.
General Wirahadikusumah said subordinates who acted under orders in committing crimes such as kidnapping and other human rights abuses should be put on non-active duty. "Their willingness to accept the decision will be acknowledged as a form of sacrifice for the sake of restoring the military to the people's army," he said.
"Only those corrupt generals need be arrested and put on trial. This will have a deterrent effect on those who might entertain the same idea of making themselves rich by crooked means."
The general warned that the country's leadership faces grave risks as it moves away from Soeharto's authoritarianism. "Unless the nation's leaders cope wisely with the challenges, there is the risk of Indonesia disintegrating into smaller states," he said.
General Wirahadikusumah said that "old forces", deeply entrenched and possessing enormous resources, contrasted with new forces which have little money and have to start from scratch.
"Unfortunately many people who are guilty of corruption do not consider themselves doing any wrong," he said. "They even compete with one another for more power in order to amass even more wealth, further widening the gap and making reconciliation more difficult to attain."
Yesterday, in his first independence day speech, Mr Wahid promised to rid the country of what he called "evil" corruption.
"In the past the full participation of the public at large in the process of producing the prosperity and enjoying the fruit of development was very limited due to the highly centralised decision-making process and power-sharing that were entailed by the KKN [corruption, collusion and nepotism] practices," he said.
Mr Wahid pleaded for peace among the country's warring ethnic and religious groups, saying that 50 years after independence "blood still sheds, vengeance and hatred loom large in the hearts of some of our supposedly independent guards, despite the fact that our nationalism is being seriously engulfed by world globalisation".
In a speech read by the Vice-President, Ms Megawati Sukarnoputri, Mr Wahid said that "dirty" hands were behind much of the communal violence that has killed thousands and driven off investors.
"We need to formulate a national agenda for reconciliation, dialogue and communication to repair relations between people in every region," he said.