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| In Jakarta, cleaning house is slow and painful | By Donald Greenlees International Herald Tribune
MONDAY, MAY 9, 2005
| JAKARTA Researchers at the Indonesian Institute for Science needed about $15,000 to hold an education seminar last year. But the money had been left out of the annual budget. The only option was to go to the Finance Ministry to request the extra funds. The news was good. With some juggling of the budget, the state-run institute could hold the seminar. But there was a catch, said a high-ranking official who tracked the case: The institute would have to sign a receipt for the requested $15,000 but would receive only about half the amount. This is a common story when dealing with the Indonesian Finance Ministry, anticorruption activists and government officials say. The story is the same with other parts of this country's notoriously corrupt bureaucracy: Payoffs are a part of doing business here almost any time money is mentioned. Vows to eradicate government corruption have been mantras that all presidents have been obliged to repeat since the removal of Suharto in May 1998. Most have paid little more than lip service to demands from international aid agencies and the public for cleaner government. But President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has opened the most determined anticorruption campaign since Suharto's fall. The fate of his presidency and the long-term economic health of Indonesia could hinge on the outcome. Since his election in October, Yudhoyono has laid out an ambitious program for combating corruption, instituted some administrative reforms and has won praise for permitting investigations into the activities of several senior officials. On April 28, he tried to lend credibility to his antigraft promises with what some activists regarded as a stunt: He said he would start with his own office. Officials from state audit and anticorruption agencies would be called in to examine the offices of the president, vice president, state secretariat and cabinet secretary. "It's at the top of the agenda," said Andi Mallarangeng, a presidential spokesman. But he added: "Corruption has been rooted in the Indonesian system, so we have to attack it from many directions. You have to have a deterrent effect through prosecutions, but we also have to build up a new system to prevent corruption. We need systemic change as well." Cleaning out this corruption will be a painfully slow process, observers say. The watchdog group Indonesian Corruption Watch, for example, says that whenever funds are disbursed to government agencies, Finance Ministry officials take a cut. "You don't get disbursement of the budget allocated for you unless someone has been paid off," said the official who tracked the Indonesian Institute for Science case. The official requested anonymity because of fears of retribution from the Finance Ministry, reflecting the power that officials have over potential whistleblowers. Transparency International, based in Berlin, which monitors and supports efforts to fight corruption around the world, has consistently placed Indonesia near the bottom of a global index that rates perceptions of corruption among business people and analysts. There are doubts about whether Yudhoyono has either the will or the capability to reduce corruption significantly, or the stamina necessary for what will inevitably be a long haul. Activists say his efforts since the election six months ago have been well-meaning but ineffectual. They cite resistance from officials skilled at bureaucratic guerrilla war, the lack of focus on implementation within the government, the absence of tangible benefits with which to muster public support and the widespread habit of business of getting what it wants by paying off politicians and bureaucrats. "One of the biggest problems faced by the president is how to monitor and ensure his anticorruption program is implemented by each ministry," said Danang Widoyoko, deputy head of Indonesian Corruption Watch. He added that there would be fierce resistance from poorly paid officials to giving up such extra sources of income. Government officials have seen anticorruption crackdowns, and presidents, come and go and probably believe they can wait out the latest drive and resume business as usual once the fervor passes. But there are causes for optimism. The government has tried to signal its seriousness by prosecuting some government officials. In April, the former governor of tsunami-ravaged Aceh Province, Abdullah Puteh, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined 4.1 billion rupiah, or $431,000, for embezzling 11 billion rupiah in state money. He is appealing the conviction. Yudhoyono, who must sign a release to allow investigations into government officials, appears to be permitting prosecutors to do their job. Since it was started in March, a crackdown on illegal logging has led to the arrests of several police and military officers and slowed environmental destruction. The government is also going after powerful businessmen who prosecutors believe bribed their way out of loan obligations to state banks. It hopes that such high-profile prosecutions will set an example and make officials think twice about seeking or accepting bribes. Still, Widoyoko said the new vigor in prosecuting corruption had yet to net any "big fish." He said it was too early to tell whether it would succeed. Law enforcement itself is regarded as one of the most corrupt segments of government. Joel Hellman, head of the World Bank's Indonesian governance program, said: "Indonesia has transparency without accountability. That is unusual. Issues get raised but nothing ever happens." He added: "Until there is a feeling that the police, the courts and the prosecutors are themselves free of corruption, there will always be a question mark over the system." But the mood has shifted a bit; there is some hope that the airing of the debate over corruption could produce results. Newspapers now overflow with stories about corruption. Indonesians are increasingly willing to speak out about the problem, even to acknowledge the part they play in it themselves by acceding to the bribes that figure in nearly everything in daily life, from traffic infringements to the renewal of passports and identity cards. Last summer, a survey by Transparency International found that Indonesians were the most optimistic people in the world in their expectations that progress would be made in reducing corruption. Of 1,200 people surveyed from July to August, 66 percent were confident that corruption would decrease by either a "little" or a "lot" in the coming three years. At the same time, surveys by Transparency International suggest there might be a slight gap between the perception and the reality of how bad corruption is in Indonesia. On the perception index in 2004, Indonesia was rated as seventh worst for corruption out of 133 countries. But another survey indicated that only 13 percent of Indonesians admitted that they or their families had paid a bribe in the previous 12 months - 22 countries rated worse. Hellman of the World Bank said he believes that any evidence of tangible progress in establishing cleaner government, particularly in aid dollars being spent on tsunami relief in Aceh, could have an immediate effect on changing perceptions. Such a change could lift Indonesia's standing on Transparency International's index and have rapid benefits for investment. But he warned that the government did not have time to waste. "If people don't see serious actions with consequences on the part of the government," Hellman said, "the window will close quickly."
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