Pandaya, Jakarta – It has been three months since the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) rocked the boat when it arrested Aulia Pohan, a former Bank Indonesia deputy governor who happens to be the father-in-law of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's son.
No major bang has been set off since then to maintain the KPK's status as a fearsome yet respectable graft-buster which has become the Yudhoyono administration's icon in its clean governance image building.
Lately, the KPK has come under fire for shifting its focus from heavyweight cases in Jakarta to "smaller" cases elsewhere that can be handled by local police and prosecutors with its supervision.
Last week, the KPK amused the skeptical public when it hosted a meeting where political big shots, including Golkar chairman Jusuf Kalla, were present and together pledged corruption-free politics. This particular event raised some eyebrows, especially because several politicians there are among big-time suspected thieves that the KPK has been investigating, and some have received hefty jail terms.
"The KPK is getting lazy and reluctant to arrest the big fish," screamed a recent front-page headline of the hard-hitting Rakyat Merdeka daily. Any reasons to reject this allegation? No more big-time crooks to chase, perhaps?
What about the 50-plus House of Representatives legislators whom fellow lawmaker Tamsil Linrung from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), an Islamist party that portrays itself as a "clean and professional" party, allegedly had received bribes in a forest conversion project Bagan Apiapi, South Sumatra? And others who allegedly took bribes from BI as witnesses revealed at the Corruption Court?
And why is the KPK is not interested in pursuing court evidence suggested the involvement of senior prosecutors from the Attorney General's Office in the US$650,000 bribery scandal that landed prosecutor Urip Tri Gunawan and businesswoman Artalyta Suryani in jail last year?
Adding insult to injury, Attorney General Hendarman Supandji recently appointed two senior attorneys implicated in the scandal, M. Salim and Kemas Yahya, to lead a task force in charge of handling graft cases.
Kemas and Salim were among AGO prosecutors mentioned in the Urip-Artalyta graft trials, but an internal AGO probe found they had committed minor breaches of the code of ethics and they were removed from their posts.
When addressing last week's gathering with Diponegoro University students in Semarang, Hendarman said he acknowledged giving Kemas and Urip a job so that he would not be accused of "violating human rights" by denying them a seat. He wanted to make them "torchbearers" in the fight against corruption.
There have been conflicting reports about whether Kemas and Salim were actually given the job or the AGO leadership cancelled it because of the loud public outcry, after a spokesman earlier announced it. Ironically, the dust of controversy has clouded the political landscape just when AGO is trying to shed its image as a corrupt state institution, which countless surveys have suggested.
It also happened when Hendarman had difficult times defending the AGO's controversial decisions to halt investigations into mammoth graft cases, the latest being the sale of two Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC) by state oil and gas firm PT Pertamina, which allegedly caused millions of dollars in lost taxpayer money. The case involved former state minister for state enterprises Laksamana Sukardi and two senior Pertamina officials.
The attorney general also suffered a major blow when it lost a legal battle against businessman Tommy Soeharto, son of former president Soeharto, over Rp 1.2 trillion (US$100 million) in unpaid taxes.
On the legislative front, the developments are no less disappointing. Lawmakers in Senayan, who have practically a month to finalize the amendment of the corruption court bill, have been dragging their feet for unknown reasons.
Legislators in charge of finalizing the bill have openly said it is difficult to meet the quorum each time a meeting is called because the politicians are busy campaigning in their respective constituencies in this pre-election season.
What a reason! The House is also racing against time to pass laws on halal products, for instance, and there has been no complaint about such terribly high rates of absenteeism. The corruption court bill was drafted in December 2006 after the Constitutional Court killed a provision in the 2002 KPK law, which became the basis for the establishment of the Corruption Court.
The Constitutional Court ordered the government to draft a new law that would put the Corruption Court under the regular district court. Lawmakers have until December 2009 to finish the bill, a deadline that is unbeatable because of the busy campaigning activities and the possibility that many incumbent lawmakers may lose their seats.
There have been suggestions that to speed up the process, lawmakers are focusing on the contentious issues only and leaving the rest the way they are to revise later on. There has been no response from Senayan so far.
Being too caught up in the rat race is of course not a good excuse for the lawmakers to drag their feet in finalizing the bill that will undoubtedly mean a lot to improving the nation's well-being – if properly enforced.
Apparently, many legislators are reluctant to work on the bill because it would look like they are designing their own (or their fellow lawmakers') prison cells, given that many of the crooks that the court has jailed are lawmakers and some of them are currently being ensnarled and awaiting verdicts.
Interestingly, nowadays when every politician is out polishing their image for the upcoming general elections, uprooting corruption is seldom heard as a campaign theme. The two presidential frontrunners, Yudhoyono and Megawati Soekarnoputri, are more interested in promising voters cheap basic commodities and cheap fuels, for instance.
As far as Yudhoyono is concerned, this slowing rigor in the war on corruption is a pity, given that the prosecution and sentencing of numerous high-profile figures has lifted its profile. Recent developments put the future of the government's anticorruption campaign in doubt.