After months of interviews and auditions, which included a tug-of-war within the House of Representatives over trivial procedural technicalities, the House's Commission III on legal affairs eventually voted and elected on Friday attorney Abraham Samad as the new chief of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).
He replaces Busyro Muqoddas, who had earlier agreed that the House should elect the new chairman along with four new KPK leaders.
The election of Samad came immediately after the House commission elected four new members of the anticorruption commission's board of leadership – Bambang Widjojanto, Adnan Pandupraja, Zulkarnaen and Samad himself. Busyro will remain a member of the KPK leadership board despite his defeat.
The House of Representatives is essentially a political institution, whose membership is established through an amalgamation of representatives of political parties entitled to legislative seats after securing sufficient votes during elections held every five years. It is therefore not surprising if all products of legislative activity, including the election of the new KPK chief and leaders, are politically motivated.
The political nuance in the election process on Friday was very strong, as was evident in the outcome. Samad's rise to the chairmanship came as a surprise because he defeated Bambang Widjojanto, a media darling who topped the list of eight eligible candidates for the new KPK leadership screened by the government-sanctioned selection committee. Samad only ranked fifth in the committee's list.
Also surprising was the exit of Yunus Husein, Abdullah Hehamahua and Handoyo Sudrajat, who were among the top four candidates recommended by the selection committee for the new KPK leadership race.
Now that the election is over, the big question is whether the new KPK leadership can meet the gigantic challenge of improving Indonesia's tarnished image due to continued rampant corruption in the country.
The results of Berlin-based Transparency International's latest Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2011 exposed the sluggish pace of Indonesia's anticorruption campaign. The country's ranking has risen to 100 out of 183 countries, up from 110 last year. It scored 3.0, a slight increase from last year's 2.8. The CPI perceives 10 as the cleanest score and 0 as the most corrupt.
The new KPK leadership is under pressure to improve its performance, especially after a number of defendants were acquitted from all corruption charges by corruption courts in several regions. It is true that the acquittals cannot completely be blamed on the KPK, as the charges against the defendants had been prepared by its branch offices, whose infrastructure and manpower might not match those available in the capital.
As part of institutional capacity building, the KPK also needs to uphold and rigidly impose the "rules of the game" so as to prevent the repetition of alleged misconduct among commissioners.
Winning the leadership race is an achievement, but bringing an end to rampant corruption in Indonesia would be extraordinary.