Hera Diani, Jakarta – Indonesia may have progressed in controlling corruption during the past two years, but it should continue its efforts or risk lagging behind other countries, an expert warns.
World Bank Institute global programs director Daniel Kaufmann said Monday that Indonesia had moved from 16th position from the bottom of the institute's global corruption index in 2002 to about 40th from the bottom in 2004, among the more than 200 countries the bank rated.
According to the index, the country has also made progress in several governance indicators – the rule of law, government effectiveness, political stability and "voice and accountability" – from 1998 to 2004.
Despite this, Indonesia was still ranked among institute's "red alert" countries, Kaufmann told a seminar on corruption here. "While the progress is not negligible, Indonesia needs to continue improving its governance, as no other country wants to stay at the bottom," he said.
Kaufmann said countries like Indonesia needed to honestly question efforts that had failed to improve governance. Focussing only on bureaucratic corruption, attempting to end graft by overregulation, creating excessive anticorruption agencies and blaming graft on history, culture or legal issues – all were ideas that should be reevaluated, he said.
Increased transparency was essential to controlling corruption, he said, and there were 10 criteria that needed to be met by the country to improve its graft "scorecard".
These included the need for the public disclosure of the assets and incomes of candidates, public officials, politicians, legislators and all of their dependents. Political campaign contributions by individuals and firms, campaign expenditure, and the results of parliamentary voting also needed to be made public, he said.
The government needed to effectively enforce conflict of interest laws, separating business, politics, the legislative branch and government. It should also publicly blacklist firms found to have bribed officials and effectively enforce laws governing the freedom of information, he said.
Other important reforms involved fiscal/financial transparency; e-procurements (Internet transparency and competition); creating a transparent, streamlined regulatory framework, corruption surveys and governance monitoring.
World Bank Jakarta official Joel Hellman said the country's Corruption Eradication Committee (KPK) was on the right track by continuing to prosecute corrupt officials. "But the committee needs to get serious and strategic with the issues (of corruption)," he said without elaborating.
Kaufmann said it was important to explode myths surrounding good governance; that it was a luxury only rich countries could afford and that it took generations for governance to improve.
"A number of emerging economies, including the Baltics, Botswana and Chile have shown that it is possible to reach high standards of governance without yet having joined the ranks of wealthy nations," Kaufmann said. "There are also improvements exhibited by some African countries in a short period of time."