Over the last three weeks, at least three surveys have uncovered a growing public distrust of political parties, all because of corruption cases plaguing their leaders and individual members.

Apart from the falling reputation of the country's political parties, the surveys, conducted separately by the Indonesian Survey Circle, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies and the Indonesian Survey Institute, and thus confirming each other, have much else in common as they found a huge constituency of undecided voters.

This sharp decline in public faith serves not only as a warning to political parties ahead of the legislative and presidential elections in the next two years, but also for the future of the country's hard-won democracy. Unless the parties initiate major reforms to restore their tarnished image, people will be tempted to reminisce about the good old days or perhaps consider unconstitutional moves to rebuild Indonesia from scratch.

If the elections were held today, abstainers or poll boycotters would outnumber people who exercised their right to vote. Alternatively they would become negative voters, casting ballots only to punish certain parties or candidates who, they deem, have broken their promises.

Like it or not, the surveys seem to portray widespread public disappointment in political parties for misusing the people's mandate to pursue their own interests. Corruption and bribery involving politicians as well as the luxury facilities they enjoy and seek, come in the wake of repeated reports of deteriorating infrastructure and, more ironically, Indonesian development, which has resulted in a fall in the country's Human Development Index.

Without doubt, political parties are held responsible for graft practices that have apparently gone unchecked, thus betraying the founding agenda of reformasi in 1998 that envisioned the uprooting of corruption, collusion and nepotism – a reform movement that earned Indonesia a new status as the world's third-largest democracy.

In the case of former Democratic Party treasurer Muhammad Nazaruddin, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has disclosed potential state losses amounting to Rp 6 trillion (US$662.95 million) in 31 projects sanctioned by five ministries. A more fantastic amount of state losses could be found if the KPK was persistent and received full backing in its investigation into alleged mafia practices involving the House's budget committee in determining the distribution of state funds for regional development.

Not only have the political parties been accused of systematic embezzlement of state funds, known as korupsi berjamaah or collective corruption, they have also resisted anticorruption moves by undermining the fight against graft as evident in their support for moves to implicate two KPK deputy chiefs in a bribery case in 2010 and to dissolve the KPK last year. Currently the parties are challenging the government's decision to temporarily stop granting remission to corruption convicts.

It is not defensiveness, as displayed by House of Representatives Speaker Marzuki Alie on Monday, that the public wants from their political parties. When referring to his fellow Democratic Party politicians Nazaruddin and Angelina Sondakh as failed products of the party's recruitment system, Marzuki was turning a blind eye to the chronic absence of ethics facing not only the ruling party but all political parties in this country.

Without ethics, the huge power entrusted in our politicians will be exercised not for the benefit of the people, but to fill the pockets and deposit boxes of individual politicians and their parties. Almost certainly political parties will be held accountable for the decline of constitutional democracy in Indonesia – for the second time since the late 1950s.