Rizky Amelia – The antigraft commission will seek to have anyone convicted of corruption automatically dismissed from the civil service, an official said on Wednesday.

"In the future, we will include it under Article 35 of the penal code in our indictment, so that the judges can order the revocation of the rights of defendants in corruption cases [to retain their civil service jobs]," said Anatomi Muliawan, a legal officer with the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

Under the article, judges will have the right in their verdicts to order the dismissal of a convict from a government job, revoke their right to vote and even bar them from running for public office.

Anatomi also said that former corruption convicts should be prohibited from being appointed or promoted to new positions, in line with the 1999 Corruption-Free Bureaucracy Law that requires officials to be free of all indications of graft or nepotism.

"After a court verdict, there should be action taken by the bureaucracies in the regions," he said. "The problem is that the verdicts are never fully followed up by the administrative offices. They should follow the verdicts to the letter, including enforcing the administrative sanction of dismissal."

He referred to the recent case of Azirwan, who was convicted in a corruption case but was subsequently appointed as the head of the fisheries and maritime affairs agency in the Riau Islands.

The 1999 law states that officials who have been convicted of corruption are no longer fit to work in the civil service. Anatomi said that Azirwan's appointment showed that there was a disconnect between law enforcers and regional administrations.

Azirwan, the former district secretary of Bintan in the Riau Islands, was arrested by the KPK while trying to bribe district legislators to get a recommendation for the conversion of a forest in Bintan. On Sept. 1, 2008, he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and fined Rp 100 million. He was released in 2010.

"To prevent this from becoming a trend, there needs to be coordination between the KPK and the Home Affairs Ministry," Anatomi said. "This is part of prevention, and has a direct effect on corruption eradication."