APSN Banner

Indonesians becoming too used to graft?

Source
Straits Times - July 20, 2000

Jakarta – A series of corruption charges have been brought to light within the last two months alone, but they only add to the numerous graft cases yet to be processed in the Indonesian legal system, much less resolved in court.

In addition to the ongoing probe into the graft charge of former President Suharto and the trials of Bank Bali scam, Indonesians are discovering more each day how their tax money had been abused by the powerful.

Some of the most notorious cases are the illegal use of state banks' export credit by textile giant Texmaco, the abuse of billions rupiah of the central bank's liquidity credits by officials of the lucrative National Logistics Agency and by undeserved private banks and the misuse of reforestation funds.

Of all the cases, the government has only started an investigation into the multi trillion-rupiah Texmaco case – but halted it in May for a lack of incriminating evidence – as well as some minor irregularities in the Forestry Ministry.

Topping this is the latest baffling discovery of vast sums of money missing from the state coffers in the second half of the previous budget year.

The lack of reaction generated by the state auditor's report, however, raises the concern: Have Indonesians become highly tolerant of corruption that even such a massive figure, which is 11 times its loan from the International Monetary Funds this year, fails to move them? Or is corruption not worth pursuing if it does not carry political consequences?

Analysts think it is the latter. That most of the corruption involved second to lower tier bureaucrats makes it a less attractive proposition for politicians to pursue, they said.

"There are some political nuances in some of the recent corruption allegations because there are so many vested interests," Mr Adi Andojo Soetjipto, a former Supreme Court Justice, told The Straits Times.

Indonesians have seen, in the past few months, how graft charges were used as weapons in a vicious power struggle that deepens the split between President Abdurrahman Wahid and his opposition in Parliament.

He had been linked to at least two cases that may be probed by Parliament: Buloggate, which involved his former masseur and Bruneigate, which revolves around the US$2 million "personal donation" for him from the Brunei Sultan. Mr Abdurrahman has also been accused of having influenced a legal tender of a power project in East Java that is allegedly marred with favouritism.

In turn, his National Awakening Party struck back by complaining about irregularities occurring in an institution headed by Parliament speaker Akbar Tandjung in the 1990s, when he was a minister in Suharto's Cabinet. Mr Akbar, whose Golkar party has been critical of Mr Abdurrahman lately, is accused of embezzling billions of rupiah of the civil servant's housing savings to bankroll his party, a charge he dismissed as "character assassination".

All this political back-biting has not helped any effort to cleanse corruption. Mr Adi, who now heads the government-sanctioned Joint Anti-Corruption Team, said the government's most challenging snag in bringing corruptors to court was finding witnesses who would testify against them.

"The hardest part is to get someone to admit that he has bribed or colluded with a bureaucrat," he said. This is when a plea bargain might help encourage the witnesses, he said.

Although Indonesian law recognises the practice of plea-bargaining for witnesses who testify against the defendant, it was not known as a common practice in the country's legal system previously.

Last month, however, Attorney General Marzuki Darusman said that witnesses who would testify against the defendants on corruption cases could be exempted from punishment, a move assumed to signal the 131 witnesses in the Suharto's case.

But even with this, there is no guarantee of an impartial and reliable trial on corruption, as the integrity of most of the judges and attorneys are still questionable, said Mr Adi, whose critical stance on corrupt judges had caused him his job in mid 1990s.

For this purpose, the team, which in August next year will evolve into a presidential body, is working on rooting out corruption in the justice system. "I can't say that we'll ever be able to cleanse corruption 100 per cent because it is too deeply rooted. But I will be happy enough if we can bring to court one or two big cases within our one-year term," he said.

Cases: Still unsolved

  • The case involving former Indonesian President Suharto, who has been named a suspect in a corruption probe.
  • The 546 billion rupiah Bank Bali scam, which involves former President B.J. Habibie's inner circle, has been under public scrutiny for sometime, but some people linked closely to the scandal have not been named as suspects.
  • Buloggate, which involves a former masseur of President Abdurrahman Wahid and the deputy chief of the National Logistics Agency, has been investigated by the police, but the lack of transparency and the sluggish pace of the probe cause many to suspect it was not carried out seriously.
  • Investigation into the Texmaco case, in which textile magnate Marimutu Sinivasan allegedly abused 18 trillion rupiah of the state bank's pre-shipment credit, started in late 1999 but was halted last May due to a lack of incriminating evidence. Its whistle blower, Cabinet Minister Laksamana Sukardi, lost his job shortly before the announcement.
Country