Joe Cochrane – With his long, bushy hair and 1960s guitar rock ringtone on his Blackberry, it's not a stretch to say Alvin Lie has a little bit of jaman dulu, or the old days, in his soul.

But on the eve of official campaigning for the April 9 legislative elections, the two-term member of the House of Representatives reminisces back only 10 years, and does so with sadness. Lie, a senior member of the National Mandate Party, or PAN, first ran for office in 1999 amid the reform era that had swept former President Suharto from power only a year before.

He was one of many first-time politicians – idealistic, untainted, eager to serve the nation – who joined the ranks of the 1999-2004 House, also known as the DPR. But the current legislature that finishes its five-year term this year, Lie says, as diplomatically as possible, is "very different."

Ten years ago, he said, the House attempted to use its authority to wash away Suharto's culture of authoritarianism and corruption, but today more and more lawmakers use their authority to line their pockets.

"The 1999-2004 group was involved in the reform movement. There was a much stronger link with the aspirations of the people," Lie said. "There was a stronger moral and mental barrier not to be involved in [illegal] practices."

Today, it's fair to ask whether there's any barrier left, mental or otherwise. The House has been relentlessly tarred and feathered by bad press from corruption allegations, arrests, court trials and convictions of not only former and current lawmakers, but even entire legislative commissions.

"From the cases I've observed, all DPR functions involve bribery," said Teten Masduki, secretary general of Transparency International Indonesia, "and they also have a say in the appointment of officials, commissions, and boards of directors of state-owned enterprises. During Suharto, corruption used to center around the president, but it's moved to the legislature."

Even in the face of such indictments, some of the very lawmakers who quite shamelessly line their pockets, or wink while their colleagues do so, lashed out at their detractors, including threatening to sue the rock band Slank in 2008 for "insulting the House's integrity" with its anticorruption song "Gosip Jalanan," which means "Word on the Street."

As if the legislature had any integrity, critics joked at the time. But there's the rub: The intense media scrutiny on the current House has tainted the entire legislature, even though analysts say it is pushing for internal reforms and has many good members who don't take bribes.

Marcus Mietzner, a former Jakarta-based political analyst who has extensively researched the House, said, "I think it's important not to repeat what you read in the papers every day – 'it's the most corrupt institution, it's lazy, it has not produced any quality laws.' It's hip to say that.

"I think it's important to put it in perspective, not only in relation to other institutions, but other countries," Mietzner said, noting Thailand and the Philippines. "Yes there's institutional corruption, but as far as effectiveness, it's done its oversight function, which is to keep a check on the government. Not fantastically well, but reasonably well."

Just last month, after harsh criticism from lawmakers, the Attorney General's Office reversed a decision to reinstate two disgraced prosecutors allegedly involved in a graft case. But also last month, the House again set aside plans for an ad hoc tribunal to prosecute military personnel involved in the abduction and torture of student activists in 1997 and 1998. The House first took up the issue more than 10 years ago.

"They don't seem to have any sense of urgency," said Syamsuddin Haris, a senior political scientist at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, or LIPI.

Television footage and newspaper photographs often show empty seats in the House chamber, or lawmakers who do bother to show up dozing off during sessions. But it's the headlines on corruption cases that draw the most attention – and public scorn.

According to analysts and lawmakers themselves, some unscrupulous members of the House are there solely to enrich themselves by taking envelopes for influence peddling.

However, in the vast majority of cases, lawmakers take bribes to recoup the hundreds of millions and even billions of rupiah they spend out of their own pockets just to win a seat in the House.

Unlike political systems in other countries, Indonesian candidates don't get funds from their political parties and must completely finance their own campaigns. This not only includes expenses for travel, advertising, organizing rallies and producing T-shirts and banners, but paying the party itself just to be selected to run for a seat.

In a disturbing pattern that has emerged in the current election season but wasn't seen much in 2004, individuals, and provincial civic and religious groups, are increasingly demanding "gifts" from candidates, ranging from cash to farming tools to bags of cement, in exchange for attending rallies and public dialogues. With political party lists gone and a new rule stating that candidates who garner the most votes win, money is flying around on the campaign trail like never before, according to candidates interviewed by the Jakarta Globe.

"We are trying to eradicate corruption, but the election system pushes us to be corrupt," said Eva Kusuma Sundari, an incumbent House member from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, or PDI-P.

The country's major political parties don't seem too fussed, however. Under the campaign finance rules, which notably were approved by the current House, donations to individual candidates don't have to be reported to the General Elections Commission, or KPU, unlike those made directly to political parties.

That, coupled with new rules allowing larger donations by both individual citizens and companies, further opens the door to dirty money entering the 2009 elections campaign.

"Campaign finance is one of the weakest points in the Indonesian political system," said one Jakarta-based political observer, who asked not to be named. Mietzner added, "The whole issue of corruption in the legislature all points back to the issue of the party financing system. And that relates back to members of the legislature demanding envelopes."

Just as they did five years ago, members of the House's 2009-14 term who take their seats in October will need to find ways to recoup their expenses as well as pay off any loans they may have taken out during the campaign. Evidence suggests a direct connection between money envelopes and the attention paid to some legislation.

According to Sundari, legislation with political implications, or decisions by House commissions overseeing economic projects occurring in Jakarta, will attract more envelopes than a city post office.

"It depends on the commission and the bill. When the anti-pornography bill came up, no one offered me an envelope," she said. "For human rights bills, there are no envelopes," she said. "I'm only involved in human rights issues, so I never get an envelope, but I ask my colleagues and they say, 'Oh yes, I got this [envelope] on this issue.'"

The current House will also be remembered for increasingly allowing its bodies, such as the budget commission, to act unilaterally, putting up with back room deals by leaders of the major political parties, and failing to listen to demands from reformist lawmakers who want open voting on all legislation instead of endorsements by party factions.

Then there's the legislation itself, which critics say is oftentimes so badly written – most bills are packed with the particular interests of each political faction to avoid fights, even if articles contradict each other – that the laws which emerge are not helpful to the public at large. For example, the Constitutional Court has struck down five articles of the 2009 Election Law, and critics say the "whistle blower" law passed in 2008 actually reduces protection for civil servants and gives them less incentive to report graft cases.

While lawmakers and analysts point out that the majority of legislation is drafted by the central government, the House's multi-layered internal system of handling bills leaves them languishing for months or years.

"The systems and mechanisms in the DPR are not reformed yet," said Nursantia Nasution, a member of the Prosperous Justice Party, or PKS, representing South Jakarta. "The [lawmakers] have only one office staff member and one expert staff member, so we cannot do things like the US Congress."

That's a good point. In the lawmakers' defense, the House's Secretariat General is all but impotent. It has a staff of 3,000 civil servants and a whopping 1,500 security guards, but only has 30 expert researchers to serve 550 legislators and 11 commissions. The secretariat staff is under the central government, yet it has control over the House's internal budget and is largely unanswerable to the House, according to lawmakers and analysts.

"The bureaucracy is controlling us," Sundari said. "We cannot expect [reform] from a bureaucracy that controls the budget of the DPR."

Analysts point out that House commissions overseeing major issues such as defense and energy do ask tough questions of and demand answers from government officials when they feel like it. (Last month, new PT Pertamina chief Karen Agustiawan was nearly brought to tears while testifying before House Commission VII.)

Tough-guy tactics aside, it remains to be seen whether the current House, which dissolves in September, can pull itself together and end on a high note. As Lie pointed out, many of the corruption cases involving lawmakers also implicated government officials, which "shows that the House, which is supposed to have oversight of the government, is in collusion with the government."

Still, there is optimism brewing about an internal reform plan known as Sustuk, which is raising hopes in the hallways of the House compound in Senayan.

The reform program rewrites internal rules so that House business, including budgets, would be decided via open voting during plenary sessions, which currently do little more than rubber stamp decisions made by the various commissions. All budget items would also be put before all House members, rather than made in private. Lawmakers would also be barred from giving and receiving gifts, both on the campaign trail and in the conduct of their duties.

The House has also begun hiring 1,000 expert researchers on contract to give commissions and legislators more capacity to handle bills and leave them less at the mercy of the government's desires. In a stab at campaign finance reform, the House also reinstated a policy whereby political parties that win legislative seats get Rp 1,000 for their coffers per vote they receive in the elections, rather than Rp 21 million ($1,743) per seat won, in hopes the additional money will be used to improve professionalism and recruit better candidates.

It remains to be seen, however, whether these reforms, and more radical ideas such as recruiting a brand-new secretariat from scratch, will change perceptions of the current House when it says goodbye in September.

Lately, though, those perceptions are more about receiving money, with candidates on the campaign trail viewed as walking ATM machines.

Some parties including the PKS are taking the unprecedented step of campaigning door to door, both to make a personal connection with voters and because people are less likely to ask for money from someone visiting their home.

"The issue of money is really a problem now," said Hadar N. Gumay, executive director of the Center for Electoral Reform. "It could depredate the quality of our elections."

For his part, Lie has handed out his cellphone number to his constituents in Semarang, Central Java Province, for the past 10 years, so they can call him directly with problems.

"People who have been served by their lawmakers will come out and vote for them," he said. "Those who have not will be more pragmatic in deciding who they vote for." Like how? "[By saying] 'Show me the money,'" he said.