Merle Ricklefs – Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has just announced a new Coordinating Team for Corruption Eradication consisting of 51 prosecutors, police and financial officers.
Is this a breakthrough in Indonesia's battle against corruption? Is this a step taken by a presidency that is successfully tackling Indonesia's challenges and addressing the needs of its people? To answer these questions, look back over Dr Yudhoyono's first six months as Indonesia's first popularly elected president.
Last September, he won the presidency, along with Mr Jusuf Kalla as his vice-presidential running mate, with 61 per cent of over 114 million votes. Democracy was in action and hopes were high.
From the start, Dr Yudhoyono said elimination of corruption would be one of his prime objectives. In his inaugural speech on Oct 20, he indicated his priorities as addressing economic growth, poverty, unemployment, the separatist movements in Aceh and Papua, health, education and good governance.
'My administration will actively launch an anti-corruption programme which I myself will lead,' he said.
But action was slow in coming. The Indonesian media and NGOs regularly expose corruption and press Dr Yudhoyono to act on his commitments. Last November, for example, massive and ecologically devastating illegal logging in Papua became public knowledge, implicating the local police and military.
This was corruption on a large scale, with shiploads of illegal timber going out of the country, reportedly escorted by Indonesian naval vessels.
In March 2005, senior figures of the Papua forestry service were detained, but no high-level military or police officers have yet been arrested.
So military impunity seems still to prevail, as it has also in the case of trials over human-rights abuses in the former East Timor in which every senior military figure has been acquitted.
Last November, Attorney-General Abdul Rahman Saleh promised to complete several hundred pending corruption cases within three months. Three months later, few cases had been completed.
On Dec 10, Dr Yudhoyono said he had authorised the investigations of two provincial governors, six members of national parliament, four regency heads and two mayors. But activists were asking: 'Where were the arrests and convictions?'
The following day, Mr Jusuf set up a joint investigative team from the A-G's department, the Ministry of justice and Human Rights and the police in an attempt to make greater progress.
Small victories
There were, however, signs of action on corruption below the national level. Across the country, many local parliamentary members and local government officers were accused of corruption by activists, police and the judiciary.
Suddenly it was no longer unusual to learn that a governor, a mayor, a regency head or a member of local parliament was being interrogated, detained, charged and even found guilty.
So we began to see here a pattern reflected across the nation: The weak centre in Jakarta, with a poorly functioning bureaucracy riddled with corruption and with many of its resources and much of its authority devolved to local governments under a regional autonomy law, was less able to act than the local governments supported by honest people and civil society movements. Much of Indonesian politics is now local politics.
The first big fish to be caught at the national level was then Aceh governor Abdullah Puteh. In early December 2004, he was accused of taking a large cut from the inflated price of a Russian helicopter purchased by his government.
His trial began amid much scepticism that so senior a figure would actually be convicted.
At the end of last year, the Indonesian Institute of Learned Sciences (LIPI) provided a year-end assessment of Dr Yudhoyono's government. The Cabinet was unimpressive and coordination among ministers was poor, it said. The anti-corruption drive was mere rhetoric.
By this time, many observers were concluding that Dr Yudhoyono's wish to end corruption and to ameliorate the circumstances of the poor was genuine, but he lacked the will, personal capacity and governmental machinery to make these things actually happen. Dr Yudhoyono was proving adept in public relations but not at changing Indonesian society, regardless of his massive mandate.
Then came the terrible, almost unimaginable tragedy of the Dec 26 earthquake and tsunami. Measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale, the earthquake was the largest in the world in 40 years. Nearly a quarter of a million Indonesians were dead or missing in Aceh and North Sumatra.
This was only the first of a series of damaging natural events in Indonesia.
Aftershocks continue on a daily basis in Aceh. Earthquakes and floods have occurred across the archipelago. In March, the island of Nias was hit by an 8.7-magnitude earthquake and hundreds more died. In April, Mount Talang in Sumatra erupted and 40,000 people were evacuated.
As the Aceh tragedy continued to unfold and the evidence of poverty and hardship among very many Indonesians across the archipelago was clear for all to see, the government had to address reconstruction in Sumatra and endemic poverty everywhere.
Potential pitfall
A major question was what to do about fuel subsidies. These were estimated to have cost the government 59.2 trillion rupiah (S$10.4 billion) last year and to amount to 70 trillion rupiah this year.
In December, a fuel price rise of 40 per cent was foreshadowed by Mr Jusuf. Such a rise across the board for all categories of fuel would be devastating for the poor. Mr Jusuf's image was increasingly of a more effective and efficient but less congenial person than Dr Yudhoyono, and one suspected of being less committed to reform.
In December, Mr Jusuf won the race to be chairman of Golkar, which overnight transformed the majority of the national parliament, making it pro-government.
Because Golkar had been a major channel for corruption and patronage under former dictator Suharto and – despite depicting itself as the 'New Golkar' – is still much inclined to 'money politics', activists feared that the anti-corruption drive would be impeded.
Mr Jusuf carries the main responsibility for reconstruction work in Aceh – perhaps a poisoned chalice for the Vice-President. For there can be no doubt that the billions of dollars to be spent in Aceh will generate much corruption.
Measures will be taken to minimise criminality in the disbursement of aid, for the donor countries and multiple NGOs will be watching closely.
The newly appointed head of the Aceh rehabilitation and reconstruction executive body, former energy and mineral resources minister Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, insists that corruption will not be tolerated. But he cannot produce miracles.
Who will detect when wages are paid to 500 workers but only 480 are employed, or when 20 tonnes of building material is paid for but only 18 is delivered?
A small vignette: A few weeks ago I happened to overhear an Indonesian businessman in energetic conversation with someone on his mobile phone about building a hospital in Aceh. As the costs of this project were discussed, he said to whomever was on the other end of the conversation: 'And that's 10 per cent for the local government and 10 per cent for me.' Some bargaining followed until 7.5 per cent was agreed on. There will be many such discussions already under way in Indonesia.
Dr Yudhoyono and his advisers certainly know that there will be corruption and that some of it will become known. It would not be surprising if he should prefer the inevitable mud to stick to Mr Jusuf than to himself.
But back to the vexed social and political issue of domestic fuel prices. The government resolved in February to raise fuel prices by an average of 29 per cent with effect from March 1, but with protections for the poor. The price of household kerosene was unchanged, while that for automotive and industrial fuels went up. The differential between household kerosene and other prices immediately generated scams. Petrol stations mixed cheap kerosene with petrol and thus increased their profit margins. Scarcity of kerosene was reported in some areas as the cheap household product was diverted to other purposes.
Meanwhile, the promised financial support for the poor failed to flow for weeks after the prices had gone up, blocked by bureaucratic inefficiency and the usual stickiness of funding as it goes through Indonesian pipelines.
A breakthrough?
Yet there were good signs, too. In March the first steps were taken towards a state-funded medical insurance scheme for the poor. This would give them free access to polyclinics and a prescribed level of hospital care. The prices of generic medicines began to be cut. This was limited in scope at the initial stages and undoubtedly people will find ways to corrupt the system, but it is nevertheless a positive development.
Rising public dissatisfaction is confirmed by opinion polls. Over and over again, dissatisfaction is expressed at the slow pace of the anti-corruption campaign.
As noted above, the real action on corruption mainly occurs below the national level. Hundreds of local parliamentarians have been declared suspects, detained, charged and in some cases jailed. As of March, out of 35 regencies in Central Java province, such cases were being pursued in 21. This pattern was replicated across the archipelago.
But by the beginning of April this year, there was not yet a single large-scale, national-level crook who had been charged, found guilty and imprisoned since Dr Yudhoyono's inauguration.
When Dr Yudhoyono was in Australia in April, he promised again a war on corruption. These promises were beginning to sound like a broken record.
Then what may be a major breakthrough occurred. The special Anti-Corruption Court – the target of much cynicism among activists – found Aceh governor Abdullah Puteh guilty of embezzling nearly 4 billion rupiah. He was ordered to repay all of that, was fined another 500 million rupiah and jailed for 10 years, even though prosecutors had asked only for an eight-year term. There was much surprise and delight among anti-corruption activists at this outcome.
This was followed by revelations of corruption in the General Election Commission – which, with its massive contracts for making ballot boxes, printing and distributing the hundreds of millions of ballot papers, supplying ink and such like, was a rich source of shady deals.
The irony here is that the commission consists largely of civil society activists, so the revelations constitute a sober reminder of how very difficult it will be to tackle graft in a society characterised by poverty and pervasive corruption that reaches into the very institutions on which reform depends.
On April 28, a week and six months after his inauguration, Dr Yudhoyono announced – yet again – a large-scale anti-corruption drive that would begin with the offices of the President and Vice-President themselves. 'I want to clean my own house,' he said.
That was what he said six months before. That was what he has said several times since.
And now he has formed his new 51-person Coordinating Team for Corruption Eradication. People are already asking how this body will avoid tripping over the special anti-corruption bodies already created.
Deeds must follow
Dr Yudhoyono knows that corruption pervades every part of the government, so if there is to be reform, he must lead it himself.
But as president he cannot be out there counting the dollars and checking the contracts in government agencies across the nation. He must rely on his officials, of whom there are few he can trust. There are some outstanding, honest opponents of corruption available to him, but he has yet to show that he can empower and support them fully.
We must accept that official fraud will never be eliminated in Indonesia any more than criminality can ever be 100 per cent eliminated in any country. But the situation in Indonesia is so extreme that it represents a core problem for the nation.
Indonesia illustrates a dilemma of those who seek 'good governance' in such nations. If official salaries are so low that some people can only feed their families by tapping unofficial sources of income, if senior figures have opportunities to make vast amounts of money, and if the very arms of government on which good governance must depend are riddled with corruption, how does one implement reform?
Which official will be the first to declare that he will withdraw his children from school, stop buying clothes for his family and spend most of his salary on the bus fare to work so that his department can be free of corruption?
But we might hope that more people at the top will be prepared to say that there will be no more weekend shopping trips to Singapore or Perth – especially if the prospects of getting caught with their hands in the till increase.
So far, there are grounds for hope that local-level police and justice officials will continue to act against corrupt local politicians and their cronies.
The national picture, however, remains mixed. We need to bear in mind an important thing about the presidency in Indonesia.
After many years of a strong presidency under Suharto, both Indonesians and foreign observers tend to look to Jakarta for national solutions.
But in this age of regional autonomy, after two presidents who either did nothing or created chaos, the presidency is much weakened. Its powers in domestic affairs are now in large measure symbolic.
Dr Yudhoyono's repeated announcements of an anti-corruption campaign that he would lead symbolise something important. If his gestures are supported by real action from the Anti-Corruption Court, progress is possible. But Dr Yudhoyono cannot simply order a ban on corruption and then watch it take effect across his vast nation.
One should not give in to pessimism about Indonesia. There are many creative, honest, hopeful people there and many positive things going on. But until the rule of law is strengthened and corruption significantly ameliorated, many other positive developments could prove to be in vain. If that were to happen, then disgruntled, disillusioned Indonesians could begin to lose their faith in democracy as an answer to their problems.
Meanwhile, as far as Transparency International is concerned, Indonesia remains the fifth most corrupt country in the world.
[Professor Merle Ricklefs will take up a visiting professorship at the National University of Singapore in August. He is also an honorary professor at Monash University and an adjunct professor at the Australian National University.]