Arientha Primanita – After creating a stir by banning government officials from colluding with lawmakers, Cabinet Secretary Dipo Alam has caused further controversy by suggesting that political parties have infiltrated government ministries.
Political parties appointed representatives in ministries to take up key positions or act as advisors to ministers, and these people often engineer ministries' projects, Dipo said.
He said that he made the claims based on reports he received from civil servants who work at the ministries and are aware of such practices.
"The cadres of the [political] parties reportedly did unethical things," Dipo said at a media conference on Monday. "[They] engineered the implementation of the procurement of goods and services worth hundreds of billions of rupiah each, with the intention of helping their partners or certain business partners."
Dipo declined to name the political parties, or the ministries that were allegedly infiltrated by them.
Dipo said he learned of the practice shortly after issuing the edict that aimed to prevent corruption and collusion on budgets. He added that the reports he received were backed up by detailed information and data.
After engineering projects, the politicians usually asked the business partners that won the projects to give kickbacks worth up to tens of billions of rupiah. "If all the fees from the projects were combined, they could reach hundreds of billions of rupiah per year," Dipo said.
The party cardes in ministries work with government officials to ensure that the projects run well by offering the officials senior strategic positions. The party staff then report the officials to the ministers to be dismissed or transferred to other positions if they refuse to cooperate.
Dipo said that he was told that these party apparatchiks played a significant role in determining appointments to the echelon I, II, III and IV bands of the civil service.
"This makes the situation in the ministries become non-conducive [to good results] because of the various programs and activities that were created to serve the interests of the political parties," he said.
Reports by the civil servants also mentioned the involvement of a certain House of Representatives faction chairman, who Dipo declined to name publicly.
That chairman's job was to create activities and programs and to ensure that his colleagues in the parliament approved the budget that was previously marked up, thus making the collusion systematic, he said.
Dipo said that these practices have been revealed in several internal audit reports but the ministers chose to ignore the reports.